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

Oh holy shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’d you do to the perp?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Being macho again?”

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

“Do you ask any others?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was news to him. “Since when?”

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

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

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

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

“You need to bring Mitch Henstridge in now.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

… a cat.

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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