Ro had given him his user name and password into the special database that apparently was exclusive to investigators, and Paris knew why after first getting into it – it was fucking scary. The sheer amount of shit you could find on people! He once started a search on himself and stopped, because it freaked him out a bit. And he was Canadian! He assumed the database would only cover him since he’d been in the States, but oh no, this database went over the border. He almost searched Roan, but then thought better of it.

Roan had left behind notes from the Humanity First group therapy/bitch session, and he decided to make himself quasi-useful by investigating the woman that gave Ro such a bad feeling, Karen Hammond.

She was only thirty six, which shocked the hell out of Paris; he was sure she was in her forties. Man, she looked really shitty for her age. Was she a heavy smoker or drinker? That kind of info wasn’t in the database, but nearly everything else was. She lived in a trailer park in a really sad suburban outskirt known as Frederickson, and she owned the trailer (and had for the past eight years) but not the land she was residing on. Twice divorced, she had four kids: Noah, 20, Lacey and Joshua, both 18 (fraternal twins), and Kaitlin, 14, deceased (the dead, cat chasing daughter that had made her so vengeful). She‘d worked at the Rite-Aid down on Hauser for the past six months. Karen had some minor arrests on her record, ranging from driving under the influence (he knew it – drinker), misdemeanor assault, a domestic violence charge that was dropped (pressed by her second soon to be ex-husband; she scratched his face and hit him with a coffee pot), public nuisance, and some neighbors of hers once got a restraining order on her when she lived down in Redding. She wasn’t an emotionally stable person, that was pretty obvious, but he could almost hear Ro saying in his head “None of this adds up to serial killer”. Which was true and fair enough. (Ro was going to make him an investigator if it killed him.) It did make her a good suspect, though. She was a troubled woman who really didn’t have much to lose, and wasn’t adverse to resorting to violence. But again, that Roan voice: “Not enough.”

Now what? He input the names of a couple of other people who had been there and whose names Ro had made a note of, but none of them were nearly as interesting as Karen. One guy, Vince Hempstead, had quite a lengthy juvenile record, but that meant next to nothing, especially since most of those were for vandalism and shoplifting. Karen still remained the most viable “potential” in the crowd.

He switched the CD to Thom Yorke and went to grab a Pepsi when the phone rang. Inwardly he cringed, sure it was Annie again, but when it went to the machine, he got a surprise. “Paris, it’s Diego. If you’re there, pick up, it’s an emergency.”

Diego was calling for him? Weirdness. It wasn’t that they didn’t get on okay, because they did; Diego was cute and smart, although a bit type A, and he really didn’t get how he and Roan could’ve had a relationship, no matter how brief. Roan was very much a type B, in spite of his personal intensity, and it just seemed like a recipe for disaster. Being smart and gifted with a cutting wit were about the only things Roan and Diego had in common; from thereon in, it was just conflict.

He just had a sudden awful feeling about this and darted over to the phone to pick it up. “I’m here. It’s not about Ro, is it?”

He sighed heavily, and Paris felt his stomach just drop to the floor. Oh god no. “Look, he’s okay,” Diego began, which wasn’t the most heartening way to begin a conversation. “He got incredibly lucky, which is actually par for the course with him, but don’t tell him I said that – I’ll never hear the end of it.”

He wasn’t sure he could speak for a moment. “What the fuck happened?”

“He was shot. He -”

“Shot?” It felt like someone had injected liquid nitrogen straight into his circulatory system. “What? Who shot him? Where was he shot? Is he … are you at County?”

“I am. I told you Paris, he’s fine, he never even lost consciousness. Which is creepy when you’re trying to examine a wound and your patient keeps criticizing it -”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, trying to remember which coat he had the GTO keys in.

“He’s in stable condition,” Diego said, in his low, calm paramedic voice. It was the professional one he used to calm the upset and panicked, and Paris mildly resented hearing it. He wasn’t panicking yet; he thought he was holding in the hysterical scream quite well. “He lost some blood so they’re going to keep him here, but he’s being a total dickhead about that. Maybe you can talk him into staying overnight before he tries storming out of here dragging an i.v. stand.”

“I don’t think even I’m that good,” he replied, and told Diego he’d see him in twenty minutes – fifteen if he could open up the throttle. Only after he hung up did he realize that Diego never told him where Ro had been shot, or how much blood he had lost. Christ, now his imagination was just going to run wild.

He went up to the bedroom to get his jacket, the one with the GTO keys, but before he even knew what he was doing he was crouched in front of the dresser, opening the lowest drawer. There, beneath some folded shirts that Roan only kept around as “schlep clothes” (where Roan had picked up so much Yiddish he wasn’t sure, although he had said when he was a teen he dated this “nice Jewish boy” he met at a Cramps concert), was a small cherry wood case, too long and flat to be a jewelry box, although it was nice enough. Inside was the “spare gun”, the Beretta Cheetah (yes, that was its actual name – Roan thought it was kind of funny), along with a spare ammunition clip. He didn’t need the clip, though, as the gun was fully loaded, the safety on. Buried among the shirts was a belt clip holster; hanging in the closet was a shoulder holster rig. Where you wanted the holster depended on what situation you were going into, what you could conceal, what you were more comfortable with. Paris had never liked the shoulder holster, although it looked quite manly on Ro.

He knew how to shoot. He had an air rifle and pistol as a kid, although he never used them for much beyond target practice and mild vandalism (he was never into killing anything, not even animals, which may have been why waking up covered in blood and bits of skin was such a shock). Roan had also walked him through the basics on the Beretta and the Sig Sauer, on the off chance he ever had to use them. Paris had paid attention but hated the idea, as he wasn’t a fan of guns – real guns, ones that could kill so easily and indiscriminately.

But now he clipped on the belt holster and snugged the Beretta inside before retrieving his jacket and heading downstairs. Someone shot Roan; the very idea had turned him to solid ice. He wanted the fucker to come back, to show his face, because Paris had a surprise for him. Shoot his lover, would he? Two could play that game, and Paris was willing to bet he was a better shot.

But as he headed out, all he could think was the killer had come calling. And he wondered if he should pay a visit to Eli, and see if his alibi held up. He wondered what he’d do if it didn’t.

****

He just reached the hospital when his cell went off, Franz Ferdinand’s “Michael” startling the shit out of him. He grabbed his phone and turned it off, not caring who was calling or why. Right now, he only had room in his head for Roan.

Even though it wasn’t nearly hospital “prime time” hours (pretty much any time after sunset, according to Diego), the waiting room seemed unbelievably crowded and noisy, and he cringed slightly at the intrusion on his perfect fear and perfect rage. He had to ask the nurse at the desk twice what room they were keeping Roan in, and then had to clarify he wasn’t asking about Joan. Part of him just wanted to barge off and find him himself, but this was a huge hospital and he had no doubt that he’d get lost easily.

She was telling him these weren’t visiting hours when Diego showed up in his dark blue paramedic‘s jacket, waved at the nurse, and said “He’s with me,” before grabbing him by the arm and pulling him off down one of the corridors.

“Thank you,” Paris told him, as soon as they ducked into an elevator.

“I figured you might need the help. It’s a zoo around here.” Diego said it so casually it was almost impossible to tell it was a lie, but it was. Once again, he was being kind.

Paris always felt big next to Diego. He wasn’t short, he was just so thin; he was so type A he seemed to have a super metabolism, one that burned up the calories almost as fast as he could put them in, although he imagined his job probably helped as well. He was a good looking guy, with cafe au lait skin and large, dark eyes, curly black hair cut short and tight to the scalp (which flattered his delicate bone structure, and boy did he know it), so it was easy to see what Roan saw in him, but it was also easy to discern why it didn’t work. He seemed to hum with energy even standing still, and he knew those type of people got on Roan’s nerves after a very short period of time. “How is he doing?” Paris asked. “What happened?”

“Again, he’s fine; he must be fine if he’s still being a stubborn asshole. And from what he told the cops, it was essentially a drive by.”

“What?”

“Somebody shot at him and this kid he was with on Brazil Street, barely slowing down to do the job. Roan put a couple rounds in their vehicle, though, and they took off. They shot out a few windows and put some holes in his car, but Roan only caught a single bullet, which was damn lucky. Those guys had an automatic or something.”

“Where was he shot?”

“Upper left quadrant of the chest.” Diego held up his hands in a warding off gesture even as Paris took a breath to speak. “It totally missed his heart; it was a couple inches off. It passed through him on a straight line trajectory – which is good – and the worst he got out of it was some torn muscles and blood loss. He will be fine; he’ll recover. Although they want to get him into surgery to repair some of the muscle damage and he’s refusing. God knows why. I think Roan just likes being a stubborn butthead sometimes.”

The elevator’s slow ascent stopped and the doors opened with a faint chiming sound, disgorging them on a floor he vaguely recognized as a sealed part of the ICU. Because Roan was infected and his blood was full of a contagion, he had to be kept in a special wing.

Paris’s head was spinning with all this information, his heart trip-hammering, and he followed Diego out feeling numb. The bullet missed his heart by a couple of inches? Jesus Christ. (He didn’t care about his pacifist stand at the moment – if he saw that fucker he was dead. He’d punch him until something in him broke, then he’d shoot him. Was he becoming very American, bitter, or some combination of the two?)

As they walked down the white tiled corridor with its rainbow of colored lines on the walls leading to various places, a lanky young blond kid who looked like one of the “junior cruisers” (his and Randi’s term for the barely legal, extremely horny young guys who’d pretty much fuck anyone who smiled at them) who hung around the fringes of Panic – but was strangely wearing a doctor’s pale green scrub top – stood up from the molded plastic chair he’d been sitting in, and started to say something, but he paused and stared at him in shock instead. “Oh Christ, you’re even better looking in real light,” he breathed.

Paris glared at him. “Do I know you?”

Diego stepped forward, nearly inserting himself between him and the junior cruiser, as if afraid Paris might haul off and smack him. “This is Matt Skouris, he was with Roan at the scene, and coincidentally his mother was the doctor that treated him once we reached the ER.”

“I called and asked her to see him when they got here,” Matt said, almost meekly. “She’s a real hard ass, y’know, but she’s a great doctor.”

“Why the hell were you there?” He snapped, feeling an inexplicable surge of anger towards this kid. Roan probably took the bullet for him, didn’t he? Roan would do that; he would take a bullet for a complete stranger because that was sadly the kind of guy he was. He was a born protector.

Matt looked genuinely surprised and took a step back, as if he intuited Paris’s rage level accurately. “Uh, I, um, went with him to Ashley’s apartment. I had the key, y’know, I had to let him in -”

He nodded and gestured sharply for him to stop, as he really didn’t want to have a discussion with anyone right now. “Yeah, okay, Ro said something about that.” He shifted his gaze to Diego. “Where is he?”

Diego pointed to a door on the left side of the hall, barely three meters away. He headed straight for it, and Matt called after him, “Um, nice to meet you …”

“Tell him to stop being such a fuckhead,” Diego added emphatically.

As soon as he was inside and the door slap closed behind him, Paris found himself hammered by a sudden surge of emotion. He’d been okay up to this point; he’d held it together with what he felt was startlingly great aplomb. But now he was in a tiny ivory walled hospital room that smelled of disinfectant and blood, with Roan looking unusually small and pale in a bed of starched white sheets and blankets, and he found it hard to breathe due to the sheer size of the lump in his throat. Somebody had tried to kill him – the killer had tried to add him to the list. Holy fuck. That was wrong on several levels, but the most basic one was Paris was supposed to die first, not Roan. The tiger was going to kill him from the inside out, and Roan would survive because he always survived.

But before he could completely tear up, Roan looked at him, his eerie green eyes slightly glazed, and said, “Good, somebody who can get me the fuck out of here.”

This startled the tears back in his eye sockets. “What?”

Roan sat up, making the bags on the i.v. stands sway slightly as he threw his legs over the side and started to slide out of bed. “I ain’t staying here. I’m fine; they’re overreacting. Fucking doctors.”

Paris rushed to his side as he attempted to stand and almost fell over. He steadied him, accidentally hitting one of the tubes that connected him to the i.v. bags (one was filled with clear fluid, the other was filled with something that wasn‘t), and held him firmly by the shoulders. “You are not going anywhere. Get back in bed.”

Ro glared at him. Although his usual fire was there, that odd glaze remained. Was he in shock? “Don’t baby me. I’m fine.”

“Fine? You were shot in the fucking chest! That earns you a time out.”

He grunted in disgust. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

“Fuck you, Black Knight.” He grabbed Roan by the face and stared straight into his eyes, making sure he had his full attention before he spoke. “You are going to get back into that bed and tell me what happened. You are going to answer my questions, and then I’ll think about getting you out of here. If you don’t, I’m going to leave without you. Understand?”

He stared at him sullenly. “This is stupid.”

“I don’t care.” He dropped his hands to his shoulders and forced him to sit down. Normally he couldn’t, but Ro was clearly not at his best at the moment. For the first time, he actually noticed that he was wearing one of those awful paper hospital gowns, and it made him look that much more pale. Shit, how much blood had he lost? “Humor me.”

Ro rolled his eyes, but he sat back, slumping against his pillows. “Why’d you bring the Beretta?”

“What?”

“I can smell the gun oil on you. You’re not planning to go all Death Wish on me, are you? ‘Cause that’s my job, not yours.”

Sometimes that super smelling thing could be such a pain in the ass. “What happened?”

He told him, in a slow but concise monotone. How could he remember so many details when he was being shot at? It was typical of him, but no less bizarre. So there were two killers, or at the very least an active accomplice – did that kick Karen Hammond off the suspect list?

While he listened, he casually brushed the hair out of Roan’s eyes – his hair was growing out fast again – and noticed how cool his skin was to the touch. He let his hand trail down to the side of his throat, where he unobtrusively felt his pulse through his neck. It was a bit slower than usual, but reassuringly strong and steady. But his eyelids were heavy and kept threatening to close, even though Ro kept fighting it like the stubborn bastard he was. As soon as he was done telling the story, Paris kissed him gently on the forehead, and told him, “Get some rest. I’ll go talk to the doctor and see when I can get you out of here, okay?”

His eyes narrowed angrily and he scowled, unnaturally pale lips twisting downwards. “No, get me outta here now. I’ll sleep at home.”

“Diego told me you need surgery and you’re refusing it. Why?”

“I don’t need surgery. I can repair my muscles myself.”

He took a moment to try and make sense out of that, but failed. “With what? A staple gun?”

Ro stared at him in dazed disbelief. “No. If I can trigger a partial change, the muscles will fix themselves.”

“Are you hearing what you’re saying?”

“Oh come on Par, you know what happens when we change: bones break and reset, muscles tear and reattach themselves. It’s the trauma that eventually kills us all, right? If I hurt enough or get angry enough, I can get a partial change that I can control as long as I don’t go too far over the edge. But those fucks drugged me after I tore my i.v.s out -”

“You what?” He looked at his arm, and sure enough, where the tubes entered his skin, they were wrapped up with what seemed to be an excessive amount of gauze and tape.

“ – and I have no idea what they gave me, but it makes me feel too good to be angry. Also, I tried punching the wound, but I seemed too ready for it, braced for it. It didn’t work. Oh hey, that gives me an idea. You punch me.”

Now he knew he was out of his goddamn mind. “What the fuck did they give you, angel dust?”

Roan slipped one arm out of his paper gown, and then realized he wasn’t going to get the other out with the tubes in the way, so he just ripped it down until he exposed a large, hand sized rectangular gauze p ad taped to his chest. There were tiny speckles of blood on it. “I know I can do it. Remember when I punched out the deadbolt? I can manage a partial change. I just need some stimulus, apparently – believe me, I have tried without it. It’s not enough. Just punch the wound, as hard as you can. It’ll hurt me for a second, but it’ll help me a hell of a lot more. Come on.”

“No! I am not going to punch you! Jesus …”

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this, but you can see why, right? It’s not Human to be able to change your musculature. But I can, and I can be back on my feet by tonight; I don’t need to be laid up for a week due to surgery. I need to get back out there.”

This was completely freaky, and yet the plea was obvious in his voice. What did you do in a situation like this? He certainly wasn’t going to hurt him. It had to be the drugs, right? Maybe he was serious about being able to trigger a partial change, but … for some reason, he found it hard to wrap his brain around it. What he needed to be was sober so they could discuss this. He sat on the edge of the bed and slid his arm around his shoulders. Roan needed to stop fighting the drugs and sleep, and he knew exactly how to make it happen. He couldn’t talk him into it, but he could trick him into it.

“I started investigating Karen Hammond. I found out a couple of interesting things,” he said, launching into a slow, steady monologue in a quiet voice, and started gently stroking the back of Roan’s neck. He made sure he told him the truth but nothing actually interesting, and he took his damn time about it. It took a few minutes, but finally Ro slumped against him, the drugs overwhelming him. Took long enough. If willpower alone could blast holes in mountains, the Cascades would look like Swiss cheese once Roan was through with them.

A nurse came in, but she was a frightening looking thing, wearing gloves up to her elbows and a thick surgical mask over her nose and mouth. He forgot they were treated like plague victims; it was easy to forget when you lived in your own little world, far from “normal” people.

She wanted him out of there so he went, but he made sure Roan was asleep and still sleeping before he left, and once out in the hall he felt strangely drained. He slumped in one of the plastic chairs sporadically placed throughout the corridor, and he was relieved that Diego wasn’t loitering out here. That damn junior cruiser was still here, but he was far down the hall, talking to a female doctor with short blonde hair the exact same color as his. Obviously that was his mother, and he caught a random bit of conversation. The kid was saying “ – no I’m not using again, that had nothing to do with this -”

His rage had cooled to a hard lump in his stomach, but he still felt like punching something (although not Roan). So he could trigger a partial change? Could he trigger a full one? That was the next logical step wasn’t it? Of course he’d never heard of anyone actually being able to do that, but then again he’d never heard of someone spending more time in cat form than Human form until he met Michael Henstridge. The virus children, the ones with the viral DNA in their basic genetic make up, were starting to change everything they knew about it, and they knew so little about this disease even after all this time. It was like they were rewriting the laws of physics as they went along.

He wondered what kind of experimenting Roan had done when he snuck out late at night, how far he had pushed the boundaries, and if that was why he was so scared to talk about it. Or if he didn’t talk about it because Paris really wasn’t one of his kind. He was, he was infected, but he wasn’t really, because he started off as Human and became otherwise. Roan had always been a bit more than that.

He checked his cell if only to get his mind off this topic, and after hoping it wasn’t Annie calling him (his cell phone number wasn’t listed to his knowledge, but a lawyer had to have resources beyond the norm), he realized the message left was even stranger. “Hi Kevin, this is Tim Barlow, from the Humanity First group the other night. I know this is last minute, but we’re having a private meeting tonight at eight thirty at 817 Roland Avenue, and we’d be glad to have you there if you can make it. No need to call back, just come on by, although if you can’t make it there should be another one in a week or two. And also, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone. As I said, this is a private meeting, personal invitees only. So … anyway, hope to see you there. Bye.”

Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that. He – no, sorry, Kevin Stiles, that prick from the lacrosse team – must have passed inspection, whatever that was. Or, considering the timing, it was a trap.

Could have gone either way, couldn’t it? It was a meeting at a private household because potentially illegal activity would be discussed – or it was a set up because they figured out he was infected and wanted to find out how much he knew in a setting where they wouldn’t be bothered by any pesky witnesses.

The hubbub from Roan joining the police force had flared and died years ago (and his resignation was never actually covered), but it was possible that someone had recognized him in spite of his pseudonym. And because he was an infected that dared to get close, they had him shot today, and now they were going to privately bring in his friend after fucking the hit up. He would be an easier mark up close and personal. Was that it? Did these fucks have Roan shot? Were they planning something similar for him?

Paris knew if there were any doubts that he shouldn’t risk it, he shouldn’t go, and if Ro were awake and not as high as the International Space Station he’d also give him an emphatic “Hell no, you don’t go”. But his rage flared anew, a burning warmth that actually felt good, and he realized he absolutely had to go. If these assholes tried to kill Roan, he wanted to know right this goddamn second. If they wanted to try something with him, they were free to do so.

But if they expected him to go without a fight, they were in for one hell of a nasty shock.