Paris got woken up by a very angry nurse who wondered what the hell he was doing here – did he think this was a hotel? She really didn’t appreciate his response. “If it is, your room service sucks.”

He was probably lucky he didn’t get shot full of ebola.

He took the opportunity of the rampaging Nurse Rached to go home and get some clothes for Roan, as well as swap the bike for the GTO. He also took the opportunity to grab a quick shower, change his clothes, and pick up some breakfast (which was a Red Bull and a nuked breakfast burrito – also known as the breakfast of champions). The rain was supposed to taper off, but of course it was now bucketing down with renewed enthusiasm, and he discovered the hard way that a couple of roads were closed or so badly flooded that they were all but impassable. It was like fall in Vancouver, only the rain was a bit warmer here.

Once he got back, he encountered Diego in the lobby of the hospital. He looked exhausted, with dark crescents beneath his eyes and a sort of ashen undertone to his otherwise brown skin. He was in civilian clothes – a bronze shirt, olive drab pants, and a red leather jacket that was stylish and yet helpfully announced to everyone that he couldn’t possibly be gayer – and he assumed he’d been working all night and was just getting off shift. He had Roan’s coat, the one he was wearing when he was shot. Ro was adamant about keeping it, and Diego hung on to it, even though, as he pointed out, those bloodstains would never come out. Paris took it and thanked him for it, and Diego put a friendly hand on his arm as he told him, “I never thought I’d be jealous of Roan, you know, but … he’s lucky to have you. Don’t let him forget it.”

He must have known he’d spent the night. He was tempted to say it was a kind of penance for fucking up so badly earlier on, but who was he to deny himself an ego stroking? “I never do,” he told him, flashing a brief, brilliant smile. His arm was still a bit numb from having slept on it wrong, but he could live with it. After all, he’d had a lot worse. For instance, waking up after a transformation, feeling like his skin was full of broken glass. And when he actually deigned to move, it was even worse.

To think he used to be afraid of going to the dentist. Pain really became a relative thing when your whole body was broken down, remade, and then broken down again, all in the course of a night. It also gave him a new appreciation of powerful painkillers.

When he got up to Roan’s room, his bed was empty, and the i.v. tubes had been tied together like a couple of balloon ribbons and balanced on top of one of the bags. There was a small trail of blood leading to the bathroom, whose door was closed. “I got some clothes for you,” Paris announced loudly. “But I’m not giving them to you if you’re just going to bleed on them.”

The door opened, and Roan came out, looking not only frighteningly awake but much better than before; he looked like his normal self. “Thank you. I didn’t think I could take wearing paper much longer.”

Paris visually scanned him before handing him the pile of clothes. His arm wasn’t bleeding; there was still fresh blood on it, but no wounds, no marks that showed where the needles had been in his arms and yanked out. He suddenly had a sneaking suspicion about what Roan had done in his absence. “Did you ..?”

Roan took the clothes and tossed them on the bed as he shucked off his paper gown and started getting dressed, quickly stepping into his boxer shorts. “Hurt myself? Yeah, finally. I’m ready to go home.”

He allowed himself a moment to enjoy Roan’s torso before noticing the bandage still on his upper chest. He’d noticed lately that his arms were getting more toned, his abdomen more solid, but Paris had never thought that this was some result of Ro attempting partial transformations to develop his own musculature. It seemed dangerous somehow, although he wasn’t sure why. “This is all a bit … weird, you know.”

Roan nodded, but he noticed he wasn’t meeting his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry I just sprung it on you. I just … it’s not easy to talk about.”

“Or do, I imagine.” Before Ro could put his shirt on, he reached out and touched the bandage on his chest. Ro finally met his eyes, and at Paris’s unspoken question, he nodded an assent. He grabbed the edge of the gauze and yanked it off in one quick motion, revealing the wound that should have been there was completely gone. His skin was unblemished, unmarked – there wasn’t even scar.

Roan winced, and let out a delayed yelp of pain, grabbing his chest. “Jesus! I should have just ripped the bandage off.”

Paris smirked, about to accuse him of being a wimp, when he looked at the bandage – there was still some old blood on it – and noticed the chest hairs clinging to the tape. “Oh, ouch. At least you’re not a bear. That really would have hurt.”

“It’s bad enough as it is.” He rubbed the red spot on his skin, which faded away quickly enough. If he saw the bullet wound, the ragged hole torn in his chest, he supposed he would have been really freaked out, but since he’d never actually seen it, there was a distance in the fact that Ro was uninjured. But the needle marks … wouldn’t there have still been holes from the intravenous tubes? How come there weren’t? That was skin, not muscle. He healed that as a side effect, huh? A minor scratch compared to the torn fibers of his sinew.

The thought still struck him as surreal, and he started catching Roan up on what he missed, just to distract himself from the thought that the lion was insinuating itself in Ro more and more. Would there be a point when the two were inseparable, a hybrid entity, neither cat nor human? Was that even possible? And what would happen to him if that actually occurred? People wouldn’t accept it; they barely accepted him now.

Roan agreed with Murphy’s sentiment that the shooter was probably not the killer they were after, although he felt they were lower on the intelligence scale. He didn’t seem bothered by it, which bothered Paris, but he figured Ro would react like getting shot and nearly killed was no big deal at all. Paris waited until he was pulling his shirt on before telling him about going to the Humanity First meeting, and how Tim Barlow was emerging as the ringleader. He wasn’t pleased that he went in on his own, but he was surprised about Tim, or as he called him “the Mormon middle manager”. (Actually, he did kind of look like that.) He wanted him to be careful going to any further meetings, and whatever he did – be it a phone call or an in face meeting – he wanted him miked up so they could record it all. That was such a good idea he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it last night, but then again, he had actually gone there prepared to kill or be killed. Not really something you wanted to save for the scrapbook.

Roan hugged him, slipping his arms around his back, and rested his head in the crook of his neck. “You have to stop doing these things, you know,” he murmured. “I do the stupid shit around here, not you.”

“Nope, I’m an idiot too. Can’t stop me.”

He sighed, his breath warm against his throat. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Can I offer suggestions?”

He scoffed, but it was mild, and for a moment they just stood there, not moving. Paris slipped his hand under Roan’s shirt, just to feel his skin. It seemed almost unnaturally warm, but he couldn’t quite tell. Transformations played holy hell with everything: metabolism, blood pressure, balance, body temperature. Would even a “partial” transformation have some effect on him? How could it not? Was he killing himself just a little bit every time he tried this stuff?

“I should be kicking you out for yesterday,” Roan finally said.

“Sorry about that. But you did need the sleep.”

He didn’t acknowledge that, he just let it go. It was a few seconds before he said, in a whisper, “Thank you.”

He didn’t think he was thanking him for making him sleep here; he was fairly certain he was thanking him for staying, Nurse Rached be damned. “I love you. No matter what, don’t forget that.”

Roan looked up at him, almost smiling. “You know a statement like that usually prefaces something horrible.”

Paris tried on a lazy smile that had the added benefit of being genuine. “Since when am I a usual person?” He kissed him, glad that he was up and around and in one piece. If he didn’t think of the “why” of it, he was remarkably okay with it. Roan’s stubble felt like fine sandpaper against his skin, but so far it was at the almost erotic level. In a couple of hours, if he didn’t shave, it’d be at the truly painful stage. It was a thin line.

They were interrupted by the door to the room opening and a chirpy voice proclaiming, “Knock knock! I know the food around here sucks so – okay, busy, be back.”

They broke away from the kiss to see the junior cruiser backing out the door, a paper coffee cup and a small brown paper bag in his hands. Roan fixed him with a remarkably hard glare. “You’re still here?”

The junior cruiser – Matt – stopped, half way in and half way out the door. “Um, no. I mean, I just thought I’d drop by. Hey, why are you, like, out of bed?”

“Because I’m leaving. Is there something I can help you with?”

Matt came back in the room, looking slightly chastised but no worse for wear. He had changed the color of the streaks in his hair – they were now purple, matching his t-shirt, which also had a tribal pattern on it that seemed to mimic one of his arm tattoos. Now that was coordinating your outfit to a scary degree. “I, uh, brought you some breakfast.” He held up the coffee cup and bag. “I didn’t know what you liked, but I got you a mocha macchiato and a decent breakfast sandwich, deli as opposed to Mickey D’s.” Matt’s blue eyes shifted nervously between Roan and him, as if he knew he didn’t have a shot in hell at this, but he was far too committed to back out now. (Also known as the Iraq war strategy.) “Are you sure you’re cleared to go? ‘Cause you weren’t looking good yesterday.”

Roan sighed, and must have felt a bit bad for the kid, because his look softened. “I’m okay, really. I heal fast.” He went to take them from Matt, and Paris didn’t move his hand from his back, just let it fall away as Roan moved. Did he feel the slightest twinge of jealousy? It was funny, because he did, but in an odd way. He was jealous that Matt wasn’t crushing on him – he was so accustomed to men and women alike looking at him with lust that he came to expect it, and it stoked his ego nicely. But the funny thing about Roan’s admirers were they never settled for lust – they fell straight in love with him, and Paris felt he should know, since the exact same thing happened to him. And Roan always seemed perfectly oblivious to it. For instance, he didn’t seem to realize that his friend Kevin, the vice cop, was so completely in love with him that it was insane, but Roan just didn’t see it. That was probably for the best, though, because he’d probably feel weird dealing with him, and it wasn’t like Kevin was ever going to come out of the closet and admit it anyways. Also, poor Kev didn’t have a shot with Roan – Ro just didn’t go for the closeted – which just added to the general tragedy of his situation.

Roan took the bag and the coffee, and said, “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’d appreciate it even more if you run interference for us so I can get out of here without being hassled.”

Matt seemed to brighten at this. He wanted to feel useful to his new object of obsession. “Sure, yeah. You leaving now?”

“In about five minutes. Think you can get us clear?”

“Oh, no prob. The staff is used to humoring me ‘cause of my mom, and this one time when I was usin‘ and I mixed some X with some meth and was really freakin‘ out, y‘know, they had to strap me down to a gurney. They thought my heart might, like, explode or something.” He must have noticed the look Roan was giving him, because he stopped his ramble with a visible effort. “Ya got five, then I’m gonna tie up the front desk.”

“Thanks Matt.” He gave him a weak little smile, which Matt returned with a hundred times the intensity, and as soon as Matt was gone, Roan shook his head dismissively. “That kid is the most annoying person I’ve ever met. Yap yap yap.”

Paris chuckled knowingly. “But puppy has such a crush on you.”

He groaned in disgust. “That’s your job, Par. They’re supposed to crush on you and leave me the hell alone.”

“Ah, but I didn’t save him from a bullet yesterday and act all macho.”

“Is it too late to turn back time and take it back?”

“Yep. But next time he starts chewing your ear off, just tell him to give you a blow job. Either he’ll be offended and storm off, or he’ll give you one and at least that’ll make him shut up for a few minutes.”

“Why didn’t I think of that? You’re a genius.”

Paris tapped his temple with his index finger. “Sharp as a razor.”

Roan gulped the coffee and wolfed down the sandwich in four bites, proving that even a partial transformation could speed up your metabolism, and then they attempted to clean up the blood on the floor (it was the only polite thing to do). The rough paper towels in the bathroom were about as absorbent as cement blocks, but the napkins in the sandwich bag proved to be just the trick.

Matt did his job well – they left the hospital without even being noticed, and on the drive home, Roan dug a card out of his bloodstained coat. He found it at Ashley’s place, an appointment card for New Horizons, and that was the lead he was going to follow next. He thought Paris should try and get Tim on IM, and save all the IM messages from him. “Try and arrange a meeting, maybe agree to meet him at a bar after work,” Roan told him. “Go in wired. I’ll sit out in the car and listen in.”

“Set me up with an earpiece and you can feed me lines,” he suggested.

“And not make you crack up laughing? The temptation will be too great. Besides, you don’t need lines fed to you – you’re too good.”

“Wow, was that a compliment? I’m touched.”

Roan scooted over, putting his arm around his shoulders and leaning against his arm as Paris navigated the rainy, dreary streets. His weight was comforting and familiar, even if his skin did seem to have a little too much heat within it. “I know I don’t say it a lot – well, seriously anyways – but I do love you, you know. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” For a long moment there was silence, just the rain beating a constant tattoo on the car and the windshield wipers slapping out a counterpoint, and Paris basked in the warmth of this admission. Oh, he knew Ro loved him; he’d let him into his life, which was a big thing. Roan seemed to be happy with the idea of being a hermit, a crotchety curmudgeon who viewed all of humanity’s weaknesses with distance and a jaundiced eye. But after a minute of sappiness – which was probably a minute too long for Ro – he added, “But don’t let it get to your head.”

Paris laughed – he was just waiting for him to say something like that – and Ro laughed as well. They were probably the best matched pair of weird fucks that life had ever coughed up. The fact that they managed to find each other was probably a minor miracle.

They’d have to enjoy it while it lasted.

****

New Horizons was a dreary looking rectangular building that looked like it was made of cement, although up close you could see the stucco on the façade had simply corroded to the color of old asphalt. Inside it was actually neatly appointed, the walls brightly whitewashed and the lightly tinted windows letting in filtered light, realistic looking fake palms adding a sense of life to the lobby. The furniture was sparse and industrial, lots of bare metal and cheap molded plastic in cheap plastic colors, although the moon shaped desk at the far end of the room, just before the building dissolved into heavy security doors and maze like hallways, looked both fancy and slightly out of place.

“Hello, may I help you?” A bright, cheerful voice asked, betraying just a hint of an accent. Roan knew it came from the direction of the desk, but he didn’t see anyone behind it until he was six feet away, and then he saw her, although he had smelled her musky perfume at about twenty feet away.

The receptionist was a young woman of Indian extraction, hidden so low behind the desk because she was in a wheelchair. She was also extraordinarily lovely, with sloe eyes, sensuous bow lips, and dusky skin, her deep black hair long and lustrous, so clean and shiny he had an almost undeniable urge to touch it. She was the type of woman so beautiful he could almost entertain the idea of being straight … well, for a couple seconds at least, as long as he kept looking at her from the neck up. Still, he bet some evangelical preachers would consider that a victory and proof that he could be “cured”.

“Hi, I was wondering if Doctor Johnson was in?”

She turned to her computer, a flat screen model that was still a couple of years out of date, and tapped the keyboard. “Which Doctor Johnson?”

He was afraid that would happen. No he had no choice but to tell her the truth and hope it was enough. He showed her the card he’d taken from Ashley’s, and his own little laminated detective license, small enough to be shoved in his wallet beside his driver’s license and the folded square of his concealed weapons permit. He explained that Ashley had been murdered and she seemed to be one in a sequence, and he was trying to establish a connection between the victims for the police. He just wanted to know something about Ashley, as all he’d been able to establish from the people who worked with her at the Starbucks was she was an intensely private and lonely person.

The woman – whose name turned out to be Tanika – seemed fascinated that he was a detective, and scrutinized his license in a way that suggested as much wariness as awe. Oddly enough, she didn’t know Ashley had been killed. Apparently she didn’t read the paper, and Roan was able to guess that Ashley’s death didn’t make the five o’clock news. And while normally a pretty young white girl getting inexplicably killed would headline, the fact that she was an infected living in a notorious tenement block had probably sunk her. Not that the news people would come out and say being a freak meant she deserved to be shot in the face, but no one was interested in a kitty death unless it was a bloodthirsty cat that was killed by heroic cops.

She did seem to think his name was “kind of familiar”, though, although she couldn’t place why. He told her he had been in the papers a few years back (did she read papers then?) when he was accepted into the police force, and that’s when she gasped, her large eyes growing wider. “Oh my god!” She squealed, sounding inexplicably like a Valley Girl for a split second. “You’re that infected cop, aren’t you?!”

He cast a suspicious glance around the lobby, making sure the only thing New Horizons had on its walls was a framed health department poster and a corkboard full of colorful flyers. If they had a shrine devoted to him somewhere, he was compelled by good sense and decency to destroy it.

He confirmed that he used to be the infected cop, and she was suddenly looking at him with renewed admiration, almost giddy, like he was a celebrity or something. She did babble for a moment, something about him being a pioneer, and he wondered if he should mention he was asked to turn in his badge because he lost his temper and put a belligerent wife and child beating son of a bitch in the hospital, which pretty much disqualified him from “hero” status. But she seemed so pleased to meet him now it would have been like kicking a puppy to tell her the ugly truth, and besides, maybe now she’d be inclined to help him. It’d been hard to tell she was infected under that cloying perfume, but yes, she was, which is why she was seemingly excited by who and what he was. He had no idea that there were infected out there who liked him – he thought they thought he was a “sell out”, if they thought of him at all.

Although she prefaced her statement by saying that all clients here were confidential, she did seem willing to bend the rules a bit, since there had been a murder and all. (She didn’t know Ashley; she couldn’t recall ever meeting her.) By accessing Ashley’s records, Tanika discovered that the doctor he wanted was Doctor Randolph Johnson, a “personal therapist”, who wasn’t in today – he only came in on Wednesdays and Sundays. She wasn’t allowed to give out his home address and said so, but she did write his phone number on the back of a New Horizons card and gave it to him. He simply wasn’t to tell him where he got the number, which was easy enough.

For some reason – maybe morbid curiosity; maybe yet another sneaking but random suspicion – he asked if she could confirm if other people had been clients here, no matter the services. She said it was a breach of the confidentiality agreement and couldn’t, but she still had that eager look in her eye, the one that told him there wasn’t a Law and Order spin off she missed. So he asked her if it would be okay if he just tossed off a couple of names, and if they had been clients here, she could simply nod once or shake her head. She was amenable to that.

Roan told himself he’d say one, and if she indicated no, he’d just move on to Johnson. But when he said Patrick Farley’s name, Tanika checked her computer and nodded, and his gut clenched in sudden anxiety. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

It was. They had all been clients here: Patrick, Christa, Melissa, Ashley. And wasn’t that what New Horizons was for? It was a social safety net for the infected who had been cast out or run away from their old lives. It was some meager attempt to make up for the family these people no longer had. It was either this or the Church.

According to Tanika, there were no hard copy files of clients – it was all confined to the computer, and it was secure; it couldn’t be accessed by just anyone. He asked if they’d had any problems with viruses or firewall breaches in the last year or so, and she admitted that they got hit by a virus a couple of months ago that destroyed a lot of data, but they had back ups and were able to replace everything after the virus was wiped from the system. She wasn’t willing to tell him how many clients they had on file, but she conceded that it was around “two hundred”.

He thanked her and left, his mind spinning as he retreated to the GTO to get out of the rain.

That virus hadn’t just destroyed data, had it? It had stolen it. He thought there was a connection between the victims and Eli, but save for Melissa, it was superficial at best. Either he was in this up to his eyeteeth, or someone was actually attempting to frame him for this. And while Roan could sympathize with wanting to fuck Eli up, this wasn’t the way to do it.

He called Dropkick, and as soon as she realized it was him on the phone, asked, “What the hell are you doing out of the hospital? You were really out of it yesterday.”

“They doped me like Keith Richards. I’m fine now. Look, I have a connection between the victims, but the news gets worse.”

“And you’re back working too. You do know what a “break” is, don’t you?”

“Something other people take. This is serious, Murph.”

She sighed heavily, letting him know tacitly that he was lucky she put up with him. “People are dying, Roan. Of course it’s serious. What have you got?”

“The victims were all clients of the New Horizons center, which had its database breached two months ago. I think the killer pulled the names and addresses of all the infecteds they served to that point – all two hundred of them.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, and he knew why. There was a killer out there with all the information he needed to hunt down and kill a major cross-section of the infected population.

“Oh, ripped out his i.v.’s, attempted to storm out. They drugged him and he fought it for a very long time.”

She chuckled faintly, shaking her head. “That crazy Scot. He just never got over his childhood, did he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just me doing a bit of amateur psychology. He spent his early life at the mercy of the foster care system, in state institutions, and it seems that he has spent the rest of his life making sure he was never at the mercy of other people ever again. Being in a hospital is probably a bad flashback for him.”

That made perfect sense, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that. What kind of boyfriend was he? Then again, Roan didn’t talk about his childhood much, or his past in general, except in the occasional brief anecdote. Paris didn’t press him because it was clearly painful and uncomfortable for him. But part of him was a coward; he knew Roan had been at least been physically abused, those scars he didn’t talk about and the one he did (the one on the back of his hand, from a hot iron) were the obvious markers of a bad past. Did it go beyond that though? He had a hard time thinking about Roan being hurt as a child, it made him feel sick with rage, and his mind shied away from the possible worse case scenarios because he wasn’t sure he could deal with it. But he knew there were times when Ro just couldn’t bear to be touched, which could have simply been due to physical abuse, or it could have been a sign of past sexual abuse. If Roan didn’t want to talk about it, though, he wasn’t going to press it. But he knew why Ro had such a bone deep hatred of wife beaters and child abusers; some grudges were just too personal to fade away that easily.

Murphy touched his arm, and it startled him. He didn’t realize he had zoned out for a moment until she did. “Hey, you okay? Need a ride home?”

He shook his head, snapping out of it. “No, thanks. I was just …I hate that people seem to live to hurt him, both then and now.”

“Well, he can more than take care of himself now. Also, sometimes you can’t help but want to give him a smack.” She smiled faintly, trying to make it a joke, and he tried to respond in kind, but found it difficult. She seemed to realize that now wasn’t the time, and went back to a safer topic. “We found the Jeep used in the shooting.”

That was a real surprise. “Already?”

“Oh come on, with the description he gave us? He remains a wet dream as a witness – he sees all, he remembers all, and getting shot isn’t enough to stop him. We found it less than a mile away in an abandoned lot, set on fire. It had only been recently set alight, though, and only the front seats had burned by the time we put it out. We got forensics going over it, hopefully they’ll be able to pull something we can use.”

“No plates?”

Her lips thinned to a grim line as she shook her head. “Took ‘em with ‘em, so they’re not complete idiots. But they forgot the VIN, so we’re seeing if that gets us anywhere. I don’t want to say I’m glad they went after Roan, ‘cause God knows I’m not, but I’m relieved they targeted the wrong goddamn person, and that’s gonna cost ‘em. I only wish it was our killer.”

She was just full of surprises for him today, wasn’t she? “How do you know it’s not?”

“A major change in M.O. is the main one. This man – and I’m just assuming it’s a man because they’re generally your spree/serial killer; women are more your “crime of passion” type – does like to shoot his victims, and he does like to take them by surprise, but he also likes to be right there, up close and personal, so he can savor the death; it’s quite possible he even gets a sexual charge out of it. For him this act is very intimate. A drive by with an automatic weapon is a change in weapon, and a change in basic motive, and all of this ignores the fact that there was an obvious witness right there, that the victim wasn’t alone even though the victim was alone in every other case. I think someone else shot Roan – two someone else’s.”

“But who? And why?”

She held her hands open in a type of shrug. “Well big guy, I was hoping you could tell me. Has he gotten any death threats lately? Has he pissed someone off more than usual?”

“Other than the police department? No.”

That made her grimace, but she conceded the point with a nod. “If you think of anything, let me know. And I’m gonna have a prowler give your neighborhood a pass through tonight, okay? Call immediately if you think you hear or see anything suspicious.”

It was almost funny in an odd sort of way, yet he couldn’t laugh. “You think they might come after me?”

“You work together. If they have a grudge against him, they could include you in it.”

He wished they would. He wanted them to come after him, because he wanted very badly to beat the shit out of them before the cops showed up to haul them away. He knew if they could get Roan they could easily get him, but death just didn’t bother him anymore. He didn’t actively seek it out like he did before Ro, but he’d come to terms with it. It was inevitable, and after all he’d been through, it was difficult to see it as a scary thing for himself. “I’ll be okay. If Roan was the target, you should get the cops here to watch his room.”

A corner of her mouth quirked up in a bitter half smile. “Oh yeah, he’d love that.” Okay, she had a point. “Actually, I’ll have people check him in on him regularly, but cops are in and out of County all the time. This is where we drag those belligerent drunks who fight each other with pool cues and the assholes who get on the wrong side of knives. Those guys would have to be idiots to come after him here, and I really don’t think they are. I’d wager money Roan scared the shit out of them. They fired a couple dozen shots and only stuck one, and Roan fired two and hit both. How’d he do that, by the way? More of his amazing luck?”

Paris shrugged and shook his head. “Guess so.” She didn’t know, did she? She probably knew about the whole super smell thing, but didn’t she know about his eyesight, his reflexes? He thought that’s why the cops were so happy to have him, even though he was one of the freakish infected. Maybe she knew, but wasn’t actually aware of how supernatural they actually were. They all thought of him as Human, and he was slowly realizing that that was demeaning to what he actually was.

She rubbed his upper arm in a comforting gesture, and forced a weak smile. “Sure you’re okay?”

She thought his zoning out earlier was him trying not to lose it, but she‘d misinterpreted it. He wasn‘t upset about that, he was angry at himself – furious that he‘d missed the subtext of fear in Roan‘s insistence on leaving the hospital. He felt like he‘d failed him in some key way. “I’m okay, thanks. I’ve got some stuff at the office to clear up.”

That seemed to surprise her. “Are you sure you want to go back to work?”

“It’ll keep my mind off things, and believe me, I need that right now.” A bit of a lie, but he was always an excellent liar, and she never saw it. She was a good cop, an excellent profiler, and yet she couldn’t see through him. He wondered what awful thing that meant about him.

But he decided that was something else he wasn’t going to think about.

*****

He went home and killed time before he had to go to the “meeting”. He couldn’t call his sister, not now, and he couldn’t eat either, even though he knew he should. He had about a week before he entered his viral cycle, and he needed to start banking calories now if he didn’t want to look like a skeleton after his first change. Instead he did a reverse directory search on the address he’d been given, and discovered the address led to a private home owned by Reese and Amy Campbell, two people he’d never heard of. A quick check of the database showed that all Reese had on his record was a variety of traffic violations; Amy was clean. He worked as the manager of a copy shop, while she was a manicurist, and perhaps not coincidentally, their separate shops shared a strip mall location.

Paris changed into a t-shirt that advertised a golf pro shop he’d never heard of, and slightly baggy, worn jeans that hid the belt holster quite well. He put the spare clip inside one of the hiking boots he was wearing, although he thought it was crazily optimistic that he’d ever get a chance to reload. If they were guilty; if they did this. Now he wasn’t sure.

They were responsible for the killer, but not for Roan’s shooting – or they were responsible for Roan’s shooting, but not the killings. Or Dropkick was totally wrong, but he didn’t think she was. Her “profile” of the killer sounded excellent, bulletproof logic, and it just served to remind him of what an amateur he really was. But there was something he was excellent at, something that he was sure neither Roan nor Murphy could do, and that was make people believe whatever he wanted them to believe. He spent his whole life perfecting the art of bullshit, and now here was a major test of his abilities. Time to see if he could still play with the big dogs.

He left a note on the breakfast bar saying where he was going, and added that Roan should check his cell’s voice mail box. In case he didn’t come back, he wanted Ro to nail the bastards.

Although it was still drizzling, he decided to take Ro’s motorcycle, as it was generally seen as a very macho, “straight” thing to do (apparently most people were unaware of the gay leather gangs), and his bike was a bit more anonymous than the GTO. Ro’s bike was a Buell Lightning “City” model, a really beautiful bike with a four stroke fuel injected V-twin engine, chrome and black with translucent blue accents, this thing was fast and rough and kicked a hell of a lot of ass. It was also a fairly expensive bike, but Roan had got it on the cheap from a police auction – it was apparently amongst the ill gotten gains of a drug dealer that got busted a while back. He used to have a Kawasaki, but was happy to sell the thing to get this instead. It was definitely a trade up.

He put on his black leather flight jacket, zipping it up to avoid the worst of the rain, and then put on the full face helmet at the very last minute, as it always made him feel claustrophobic. But once he got going, the bike chewing up asphalt as he raced towards the city and out into the suburbs, he felt almost high. This was as close as he ever got to flying, and when he could really the kick the engine into overdrive, it felt even better than that. It was freedom as well as an open flirtation with death, an adrenaline rush that could be a major turn on. But the possibility that he was driving straight into hell killed any latent horniness.

The house of the Campbells sat in the center of a tree lined block, a pale blue two story house with egg white trim and a struggling weeping willow in the front yard, an ‘03 maroon Toyota Camry and an ‘05 Range Rover in a color that could best be described as sewage sludge brown in the oil stained driveway. This looked like a nice, quiet neighborhood, the kind where they might set a made-for-t.v. movie about the perils of alcoholism or infidelity or something. He parked the bike in the driveway, behind the sludgy Range Rover, and took off his helmet and carried it beneath his arm as he approached the front door. A helmet could actually be a pretty good weapon; you hit someone with it right, and you could break their nose as easily as snapping off a pop top.

The door was answered by a trim, petite brunette with shoulder length hair and a reasonably attractive – if slightly overly made up – face, dressed casually in a Budweiser t-shirt and tight jeans. Her storm cloud gray eyes quickly scanned him, took him in, and he saw a reaction in her pupils that suggested attraction. He made a mental note of that, in case he could string her along and take advantage of that. “Can I help you?” she asked, her voice betraying a hint of a Southern accent. Amy (Reynolds) Campbell was a thirty four year old woman who hailed from South Carolina originally, and he knew that was precisely who he was dealing with.

“I’m Kevin Stiles. I was told there was a meeting here ..?”

“Oh, of course, come on in.” She stepped back and held the door wide open, her face splitting into a warm but slightly wolfish grin. Once he was inside, she shut the door and he unzipped his jacket so he had more immediate access to the Beretta. “Ain’t you a cute one? Tim never mentioned that.”

“So how many people are here?” He asked, giving his voice just a little bit of nervous tension. If he was too relaxed, they’d be suspicious. But inside he was amazingly calm and centered; all ice. When you had decided on a course of action that could be irrevocable, it was bizarre what a weight it was off your shoulders.

“Just a few friends, that’s all. Tim said your story was really moving. Can I take your coat?”

He shook his head, and as she continued to look at him with that special glint in her eye, the one that suggested he could have her after one more beer, he gave her his best slow, sensuous smile, the one that without fail got him to at least third base. (Okay, the first time he used it on Roan it hadn’t worked, but that had only intrigued him.) “Naw, that’s okay. I picked a shitty day to take the bike out, and now I’m paying the price. I’m fucking freezing.”

Her responding smile was amused, which he thought it would be. Women were usually impressed when a man came right out and admitted he was an idiot, and he‘d found making fun of his own mental shortcomings seemed to be a good way to get women into bed. It could work the same on a man too, although that was wholly dependant on the guy. “I’m Amy, by the way. Pleased to meet you. Why don’t I get you a beer? That oughta warm you up.”

“Thanks, I’d like that.”

She threw him a smile that suggested he could have a lot more before leading him into the living room, her hips swaying a bit more than necessary. She did have a nice ass, he had to give her that.

The living room was an uncomfortable mix of Ikea and Goodwill, with a mottled brown carpet that probably hid every kind of stain known to mankind and reminded him for some reason of the ‘70’s (although there was no way this house could be more than ten years old). The sofa was a large brown sectional that was probably older than the house, and on it were seated three men, all between the ages of mid twenties to mid thirties, and he recognized Tim from the meeting, now wearing little wire framed glasses and a beige v-neck sweater. He looked so much like a therapist it was insane.

The other two men were a study in contrasts. The youngest of the men was a string bean, tall and wiry, in a Hard Rock Café t-shirt and khakis, his curly brown hair tucked beneath a trucker hat advertising STP, his eyes as shiny and empty as small brown mirrors. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, his knee bouncing up and down with nervous tension. Sitting at the opposite end of the couch was a average sized man sprawled back comfortably, his stomach a small round lump like he was smuggling a bowling ball, making his plain green t-shirt pull up and expose a small strip of skin with a few stray black hairs visible. His head was perfectly round, his skin betraying the slight flush of windburn, his scalp shaved and shiny as if waxed. His eyes were like small polished stones shoved deep in the clay of his face, and he was almost avuncular, although there was something about him that put Paris’s teeth on edge.

Tim stood up as he came in, thanked him for coming, and introduced Jack Sprat as Brad, while Humpty Dumpty was Reese. (No wonder Amy was attracted to him.) He shook hands with them all, noting that Brad’s hand was clammy although his grip was crushing, and Reese’s barely registered at all. Tim had a grip like a wet rag. Everyone had a Rolling Rock, save for Tim, who had a bottled water.

Paris sat in a white leather love seat across from the sofa, which gave him a perfect view of everyone and an unblocked shot, and he set the helmet on the carpet . Amy came sauntering into the room with two bottles of Rolling Rock and handed him one, sitting on the other end of the loveseat and curling her legs beneath her. She was careful not to sit too close to him, but when her husband wasn’t looking, he caught her giving him a certain look out of the corner of his eye. It was possible she was trying to play him, though; it was possible she was trying to bring him in or lull him into a false sense of security with the lure of her. Men were sadly simple – get them by the dick and you had them, gay or straight or other. But if she wanted to play the game with him, he hoped she realized she was tangling with a master of sexual manipulation; he wasn’t as easy to get by the short and curlies as other men. He’d learned his lesson the hard way.

Tim did the talking at first, and it was almost like they were pitching Amway at him. They quizzed him on what he knew about Humanity First, and his story of infected horror. He elaborated his story this time out, about his college roommate, “Perry“, who was deliberately infected and disappeared, never to be found, with the inclusion of his girlfriend, “Darlene” , who was apparently sleeping around on him with Perry. She too got infected, and he said she died at her first transition. He played up the pathos, allowing himself to get genuinely angry (not hard – he just thought of Roan laying in that hospital bed, and contemplated the fact that two of the fucks in this room may have done it) and even teared up a bit, although he never cried (too girly). He took several swigs of his beer, but he actually only allowed a few drops to get through his lips; he didn’t want to let his guard down by a single iota, not until he knew the game.

Tim feigned sympathetic looks, while Brad seemed to get more wound up and anxious (judging by the increased bouncing of his leg), and Reese seemed perfectly impassive. Amy made sympathetic noise, but that was about it. Paris wasn’t impressed. He added angrily, without prompting, “I hate those fucking cats. Everybody makes excuses for them – they’re diseased, they’re victims – but most of those fucking freaks got infected by their own stupid behavior. Since when do we give special rights to people who fuck themselves up, and fuck other people up? We don’t excuse rapists or killers, so why do we allow these freaks to do whatever they want?”

There were nods all around. “We should put ‘em all in camps,” Brad said, his knee still bouncing like he had a neurological disorder. “I don’t care if we firebomb ‘em after or just leave ‘em to rot, but they ain’t people and they shouldn’t be around us. The fucking PC bleeding hearts, it’s their fault the world’s so fucked up. If we locked the faggots up when AIDS started, it wouldn’t have spread, it’d just have killed off the fudge packers like it was ‘sposed ta.”

Amy sighed dramatically. “Way to make us sound nuts, Brad.”

“Hey, Buchanan said it first, I’m just -”

“I don’t care,” she snapped, glaring at him with open contempt. “Just shut the fuck up.” Although Brad had no accent, the way she talked to him and the slightest facial resemblance made him wonder if they were related. Brother and sister? Cousins?

Paris decided to play the “impatience” card now, as it would probably be expected at this point. “Is this the entire meeting? Just us? Seems a bit … small, doesn’t it?”

Tim sat forward, resting his clasped hands on his knees, taking on the look of a marriage counselor about to tell you that learning to trust is the hardest but most rewarding part of any relationship. “You have to understand, Kevin, we have to be very careful about the people we let in. We want people who are committed to the cause, who want to be proactive. We have to be careful, because there are people who wish to … sabotage us.”

He pretended to be confused, while all the while thinking ‘Yes, people like this fudge packer here’. “Sabotage you? For what, not liking cats?”

“It’s more than that,” Tim replied, clearly trying to think of some way to put it.

“You a cop?” Reese suddenly asked. It was the first thing he’d said all evening.

Paris’s scoff was genuine. “Do I smell like bacon to you? No, I’m not a cop. What the hell’s this about?”

He watched Amy, Tim, Brad, and Reese all exchange looks with each other, quizzical and demanding, and he had a feeling he was in. Which meant they didn’t shoot Roan, but that didn’t make him feel better. It just meant they were still in the running as the kitty killers.

Tim remained coy, which Paris suspected was his strength. They needed “young people like him”, full of “vitality and passion” (he was tempted to ask if he was coming on to him, but he knew no one in this room had a sense of humor), and they wanted to know if he was committed to bringing these infected “to justice”, no matter how it might seem to some people. (“Kitty fuckers.” Brad sneered. “They ain‘t people. They‘re like another species entirely.”) He pretended to take a moment to work out what they were really saying, then feigned shock at the idea before gradually settling into it, letting the anger come back as he almost accepted it. But he retained some wariness as he asked how illegal the things they were discussing were. Tim explained that they weren’t “illegal per se”, just things that people wanted to do but were afraid to do.

He found himself thinking of 1984, of Orwellian doublespeak as Tim calmly and rationally sold a vague bill of goods that could have meant anything from simple vandalism to all out murder. This was Tim’s role – he was the clear eyed, seemingly sane cult leader, the subtle snake oil salesman who gradually suckered you in, as insidious as the more obvious and charismatic Eli. They were two sides of the same coin, with Eli never hiding the fact that he was a pure showman in it for the ego stroking, and Tim hiding everything behind a plain vanilla exterior that belied something truly ugly lurking beneath the surface. He never would have pegged him for the ringleader; Roan hadn’t either. But he was. Sitting across from him in this sitcom bland living room, Paris recognized a fellow predator, someone who, in different incarnations, had probably talked the susceptible into assassinating abortion doctors or burning down synagogues. He wondered how many he had suckered, and what he’d gotten them to do for him. Was murder still on the roster?

Paris pretended to be susceptible, to fall under the hypnotic sway of his low, metronomic voice and friendly Mr. Rogers demeanor. He didn’t become an instant soldier for his personal jihad, he still held himself back at arm’s length, only agreeing to think about his proposal, but he said it in a way as to leave little doubt what his ultimate decision would be. And they bought it, of course, because Paris was still the king of all liars (although it was hardly anything to be proud of). Tim thought he was a snake oil’s salesman? He had no fucking idea. He let Tim think he was hypnotizing him, pulling him into the snare, while inside Paris quietly gloated over how easily Tim was falling for his trap.

By the time he’d left, Tim had given him a “special number”, one where they could discuss these things more in depth, as well as his IM name in case he felt more comfortable speaking that way. Amy saw him out, holding his arm in an unusually friendly manner, and she let her hand linger longer than needed as she looked him in the eyes and gave him a smile that could only be described as lascivious. He was half convinced it was an act, a honey trap, but he held her gaze longer than polite company would allow, feigning a response that she would expect. He could play the honey trap game too, and much better than her. They wanted him bad, and he suspected it was a set up. But a set up for Kevin – they needed a patsy quite badly, and he had been chosen. He was glad. Roan was great with the investigations, the motives, and the physical stuff, but this was where he shined.

It was dark when he went in, but it somehow seemed even darker out now, as if all the lights in the sky had been switched off, the moon hidden behind clouds as thick as cotton wool. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t run Tim through the database, but that was okay. If he was as slick as he suspected, he wouldn’t have a record. Just like Eli, he got people to do his dirty work for him. He drove off, not sure where he was going to go, which he figured out on the road, watching the pavement dissolve beneath his wheels.

The hospital had an underground parking garage manned by rent-a-cops, and Paris parked the bike down there, to get it out of the rain and hide it from any prying eyes, then took the elevator up into the hospital.

Dropkick had been right about the police presence in the place. In the busy lobby were two uniformed cops talking to the nurse at the front desk, with a handcuffed man between them. He had a swollen left eye and a huge gash on his forehead that was sending blood gushing down his face. He continued to rant drunkenly while the cops and the nurse talked over him. It was so noisy it was hard to tell, but it sounded like the drunk guy was going on about a moose.

No one noticed as he slipped by and ducked into one of the hospital’s inner elevators, which he shared with a nurse and a man in a wheelchair. He got out alone on the fifth floor, the one with the isolated ICU, and was only mildly surprised to find the hallway empty and quiet. There was a male nurse manning the in charge desk, but he was arguing on the phone with another nurse, about the wrong chart being left behind. No one noticed Paris duck into Roan’s room.

It was dark and quiet, the sounds of Roan’s slow, deep breathing the only noise. He tossed his helmet on the room’s only chair and went to check on him, putting a hand on his face and waiting to see if he stirred. He didn’t; he was probably only a few steps out from a drug induced coma. “You must have really freaked them out when you ripped out your i.v.s. You bled, didn’t you? Never do that around normals – you know how they spaz.” Of course he probably couldn’t hear him, but this was the only time he could scold him without getting a smart ass reply.

He took off his coat and the Beretta, wrapping the gun and the holster in the jacket before setting them on the chair. “We got him, babe. The ringleader if not the exact triggerman. Can you believe it’s the guy who looks like Doctor Phil’s replacement? He wants me as an ideological suicide bomber. I attract all types, don’t I?” He stepped out of his boots, and was relieved, as the spare clip had been poking him in the ankle for about a half an hour now. He bet it left a dent. “No hard proof yet, but let me string him along for a bit. He’ll give us enough rope to hang him with. I’m an angry and naïve young man, after all. I have no idea when someone’s trying to play me. I just want revenge against those fucking cats.”

Roan was sleeping on his side, which was good, as the hospital bed was quite small, so much so that Paris figured he’d have to balance on the edge. Which was okay, because he didn’t expect to be comfortable at all. He wasn’t here for himself.

He climbed carefully onto the bed and put his arms around Roan, which was again uncomfortable, but he didn’t care. The smell of his hair was instantly comforting. “You’re safe,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” Roan didn’t wake up, but he settled back against him, and Paris took that as forgiveness of a sort. He couldn’t turn back time and redo earlier, but he could stay here and let him know he wasn’t alone.

He’d failed him once. He wasn’t going to do that again.