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

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

Very funny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is this?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And this idiot shot me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah. Lucky me.”

“And he’s a real crackhead?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I?”

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

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

“I don’t even know what that means.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Barlow’s?”

“Yep.”

“Why me? Where are you going?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Only if you asked nicely.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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