“Paris,” he said loudly, giving him a light smack on the cheek. Did that ever wake anyone up? “Paris! Can you hear me?”

He’d just pulled out his cell phone when Paris moved, letting out a small sigh, and Roan waited anxiously as his eyelids fluttered open. For a moment he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes slowly coming back into focus. “Why am I on the floor?” Then his eyes scudded over to his face, and he gasped. “And how did you get that bruise? Did you get in a fight?”

“I’m okay. What happened to you?”

Paris sat up, and Roan helped him, helping him lean against the couch. “Nothing happened to me,” he claimed, although he noted with a scowl that he was sitting on the floor. “Look, I just … I felt dizzy, I figured it was a caffeine rush, so I was gonna sit down …”

“And you didn’t make it,” Roan guessed, filling in the rest of the sentence for him. Paris still looked abnormally pale, and it looked like a bit of sweat was starting to gather at his hairline. He put a hand on his face, this time feeling it, not just smacking it. “You’re hot.”

“Well, duh.”

“No, I mean you feel feverish. Maybe I should call Dee.”

Par fixed him with a stern, almost paternal glare. “I have a temperature. Big whoop. It’s not a national emergency.”

“It is if you passed out.”

Par reached up and touched his face, letting his thumb trace the area just beneath the bruise. It took everything in Roan not to wince, as there was just a little bit of pain, even though Paris was being very gentle. The heat seemed to be radiating from his hand. “Maybe we should call Dee for you.”

He frowned at him, aware of what he was doing. “It’s a bruise; I need an ice pack. You know it’ll be gone in a couple of days. When you start collapsing for no reason, though, it’s time to call in the experts.”

The look on Paris’s face morphed into something he really didn’t want to see. It was a mixture of pity and love, sorrow and sympathy, all conflicting with a slightly feverish glaze in his eyes. “Hon, you know as well as I do if I go to a hospital now, I’m never coming out again. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”

Something tightened in his throat. He really didn’t want to hear this. “Don’t say that.”

“What? It’s the truth, I don’t. And I don’t have a lot of time left here.”

“Please stop.”

Paris’s hand smoothed down his face, and came to rest on his shoulder as he sighed wearily. “I wanted to talk about this last night, but I chickened out. I guess now’s as good a time as any to finally mention it. I’m not going to survive another transition -”

“Paris - “

“ - no, listen. I’m running out of time, and I don’t want to die as a tiger in a cage. I was born Human and I want to die one.”

Roan grabbed Par’s arm, feeling the lean but still hard muscle of his bicep. He could remember when he couldn’t quite fit his hand all the way around Paris’s upper arm, but now he could. But it only bothered him because he knew what was no longer there. He was fighting back tears, because he knew what was coming, what Paris was going to ask him, and while he had half expected it, it still wasn’t something he thought he could handle. “You can’t ask me this, Par. I’m not sure I can do it.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything; I wouldn’t put that burden on you. I just want you to be there with me,”

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.” He moved in for a hug then, mainly so Paris didn’t see him struggling not to cry. If he lost it now, he would be all fucked up for the rest of the day, and he still had a murder to solve and a fucked up hustler to get out of jail. None of it was important as Paris was, though, not to him. And Paris had already worked out how he was going to die. While he was off bugging the shit out of people, he was here figuring out how - and probably when - he was going to die. It made everything else seem silly and pointless.

Paris hugged him back fiercely, and he bet he knew how hard this was for him. It certainly couldn’t have been easy for Par either. God, what was he going to do without him? He couldn’t think about that now either, or he couldn’t function. A couple of tears slipped past his eyelids, but he managed to hold the rest back.

After a moment where they just held each other, the heat coming from Paris sickly and uncomfortable (at what point did a fever become dangerous?), Paris asked, “So how did you get that bruise?”

Damn it. He should have known he wasn’t going to get out of it that easy.

****

Roan got Paris to go upstairs and lay down, and even gave him the ice pack because fuck it, Paris needed it more. As soon as he was gone, Roan shotgunned a beer, aware that using alcohol to numb your emotions wasn’t recommended by anyone, but right now he needed the numbness. He contemplated taking another Vicodin, yet decided to just to stick with alcohol for the moment. But his head was starting to ache from unshed tears, so maybe he was going to hit the pills anyways.

A background search on Gavin Lorimer showed he was clean record wise, and came from an interesting family. His father was apparently some big time agent down in L.A., although he split with Gavin’s mother when Gavin was four years old. When he was fifteen she married a lawyer with political ambitions, Clifford Braben, who was currently on the city council and gathering capitol for a run at the governor’s office. Braben was pretty conservative, a real right wing prick, so maybe it wasn’t a shock that he and Gavin didn’t get along. Wouldn’t the news that his step-son was arrested for drunken driving with cocaine in his car paint him as a hypocrite, since he was major zero tolerance on drugs? It wasn’t on his file, though - charges had never been leveled against Gavin. Presumably Braben’s connections made sure it all went away in exchange for shipping Gavin off to Willow Springs; Thora had said as much in her memoir. If Gavin wanted to embarrass his step-father, he must have been disappointed.

A Lexus-Nexus search turned up some awful sound bites of Braben’s that he tried hard not to read. Oh good, he hated gays, and on top of that he thought all infected should not only be registered with the local health department, but that they should all live in special “complexes” that would spare the uninfected from being subjected to exposure or cat attack. Would he call them zoos? Perhaps cat houses - now that would be funny. He closed the browser window, because Braben wasn’t the focus of the search.

Or was he? Gavin’s family might prove relevant to his state of mind and personality. It might also explain why he didn’t live at home. Maybe he couldn’t stand Braben, maybe Cliff didn’t want to share space with a fuck up who could only be a detriment to his political aspirations, or perhaps the truth was somewhere in between. He needed to talk to Gavin, if only to establish why he broke up with Thora, and how ugly the break up was.

He called Paradiso to see if Gavin was in the bar, but so far not yet, or the bartender was lying for him. He then searched online for fevers, and discovered it was a symptom of auto-immune disorders, along with dizziness, fatigue, and malaise - all symptoms Paris had had for some time. Roan listened carefully, making sure Paris wasn’t moving about upstairs, but then ducked into the downstairs bathroom anyways and called Dee on his cell phone.

“Better be important, Ro,” he answered, his voice fractured due to the crackling of static on the line. “I’m reading someone’s blood pressure here.”

So he was on shift now. Because of that, he decided to cut to the chase. “Does Paris have an auto-immune disorder?”

There was a long quiet moment, broken up only by bursts of static, and he was beginning to think that the connect had dropped off when Dee sighed. “Probably, yeah. Eventually the body rebels against the virus, but it overreacts, and it’s too late anyways. It starts destroying itself in an effort to save itself; the ultimate in self-destruction.” He heard him say faintly, off the phone, “One fifty over ninety.”

“Is there anything that could be done for him?”

“Paris? Well, you could get some immune suppressors, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. He’s just too weak for them.” There was another long pause. “I’m gonna hate myself for saying this, but Ro, you gotta start letting go. He’s … this is it for him. Paris knows this; he’s accepted this with a lot more dignity and grace than I could ever manage.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn’t know if he was angry or disgusted or simply scared. “Since when do you give up so easily?”

“I’m not giving up, I’m being realistic. You know I’d do anything for Paris if I thought there was anything I could do. But there isn’t anything I can do, and there’s nothing you can do either. You can’t save him, Ro. You need to stop trying before it starts killing you too.” There was a noise in the background, but the connection was so cut through with static he couldn’t tell what it was. “I’ve gotta go, this guy is going into v-tach. I’ll call you later.” He hung up abruptly, but Roan didn’t blame him - he was working, and the only time you should call a paramedic was when he was off the job or on a break. People could die if they got distracted.

Roan folded up his phone and tossed it on the counter next to the sink. If Dee said nothing could be done for him, then there was nothing that could be done. He needed to accept that; he needed to come to grips with it. Paris had accepted it, so why couldn’t he? Because he didn’t want Paris to die? Because he hated feeling so helpless? Because he couldn’t stand the pain of such a slow, inevitable loss? Because everyone he loved died horribly?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to focus on it because it hurt all the more.

He opened the bathroom cabinet and pulled out the Vicodin bottle, popping a tablet before he could think too much about it.

****

He was feeling good and numb by the time he returned to Paradiso. Luckily a different maitre’d was on duty, and let him peek into the lush bar, which was full of highly polished wood, burgundy draperies that had the soft distortion of silk, pale golden light, and gleaming reflective surfaces. It looked like a great place to get loaded, as long as you didn’t mind getting overcharged for your drinks. Gavin was nowhere to be found.

Roan drove back to Hillfield, suddenly wondering if Thora and Eric had been the only victims. What if they were the only found victims? The bay only occasionally gave up bodies - there was a lot of debris on the bottom, refuse of sunken ships and detritus heaved into the water, that could snag a corpse and hold it. It was possible that Gavin was taken out the same night as Thora, only no one had reported him missing, and the body hadn’t turned up yet. The new, friendlier maiter’d had told him Gavin hadn’t showed up at the bar the last couple of days, and that was unusual to say the least.

He buzzed Gavin’s apartment, but there was no reply. As he was doing that, a middle aged brunette woman in a thick blue quilted jacket came up, and she was a resident, as she used her key to get in the door. He stood aside as she went in, giving her a friendly smile, and then, just before the door closed all the way, he grabbed it. He waited a minute for her to vacate the lobby, then went inside.

The lobby was dingy, and looked like a thousand other sad little apartment lobbies he had seen in his life. He expected it to smell like pee, but it smelled like cigarette smoke, enchiladas, and burnt tuna casserole. Rather than take the small and frankly dangerous looking elevator, he was so tired from his booze and drugs combination that he decided to take the stairs up to Gavin’s floor. He noticed the stairwell was remarkably cold, almost colder than it was outside. Roan thought he smelled snow out there, in the sharp, dry air, and even though it was a bit early for it, he bet they were in for some. Maybe Paris would get to see it. He may have been Canadian, but he still liked snow, mainly because it gave him the chance to say, “You call this snow? Pussies.” (Of course Paris was from suburban Vancouver not the Yukon, but if this production made him happy, who was he to piss on his parade?)

Gavin’s apartment was at the end of a long hallway that smelled like spaghetti with an undertone of pot smoke. It was poorly lit and narrow, with a worn burnt orange carpet that could have been a reject from a swinging ‘70’s halfway house. He knocked loudly on Gavin’s apartment door, and announced, “Pizza delivery!”

It took a moment, but he thought he heard something thud to the carpet inside the apartment. Now he knew Gavin - or someone - was home, and they knew they had given themselves away. A muffled voice finally slurred, “Wha‘? I din’ order no pizz.” It was a male voice, and either stunned with a head injury or drunk off his ass.

“According to the order slip, I’ve got a pizza for Gavin, extra large pepperoni and sausage thin crust.” Oddly enough, this seemed fun. It was probably the Vicodin.

There were more stumbling noises, and then the voice, closer to the door, said, “I didn’ order a pizza! I don’ even like sausage …” Roan heard the sound of locks being thrown, and the door creaked open like a coffin lid. “Bu’ as long as yer -”

He came face to face with Gavin Lorimer. His face was flushed with alcohol, and puffy as well, his grey eyes watery and glazed in his handsome actor’s visage. He had a strong jaw and a dimpled chin, currently covered with a light fuzz of stubble, and it was easy to see what women saw him … well, when he was cleaned up. But it was clear he hadn’t bathed in at least a day, and his dishwater blond hair hung down in greasy strands, slightly curly from being uncombed and unwashed. He wore a dark blue tank top and khaki walking shorts, both of which hung on him like someone else’s clothes.

The scent hit Roan so hard he took a step back. It was body odor, sure, but that wasn’t the startling thing - the startling thing was the reek of cat all over him, feline musk oozing through his pores. He smelled like a lion, and Roan felt the lion in him wanting to roar, to establish dominance over this interloper. Gavin scanned Roan in confusion, and when he brought his eyes back to his face, Roan could see his pupils were so large that his irises were slender rings. “Where’s th’ pizza?”

“You’re infected,” Roan said, even though it was the most obvious thing to say. “You’ve transformed recently, haven’t you? That’s why people haven’t seen you lately.”

Gavin stared at him, panic flashing quickly across his mannequin face. He was just too drunk and too drugged to get worked up about it. “Who the fuck are you? I ain’t infected! I’m not - “

“Yes, you are. I can smell you. You’re a lion. Did you just come back to consciousness a couple hours ago, is that it? You haven’t showered yet. The smell of the cat is all over you.”

“Yer full of shit,” he slurred, then reached out, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and yanked him into his apartment. Roan let him, because that’s where he wanted to be. Gavin shut the door heavily, mainly because he was leaning against it. He could barely stand. “Who the fuck are you?” he whispered harshly. “How d’ya know?”

“My name is Roan McKichan, I’m a private investigator looking into Thora Bishop’s death, and holy fuck, you infected her, didn’t you?”

Gavin’s apartment was a sad affair, a bachelor p ad all the way: the furniture was all Goodwill and sparse, with his stereo shelves just planks of wood held up and apart by concrete blocks, and his wooden coffee table hidden beneath about a dozen empty beer and Jack Daniels bottles. He had a calendar with topless models on it, which really must have impressed the females, but Roan had a feeling that he didn’t do a lot of entertaining here. What he assumed was the bedroom door was hollow core metal, meaning it was probably where he barricaded himself when the change came on.

Gavin glared at him, trying to muster some rage through the heavy blanket of painkilling drugs. “She prob’ly gave it to me, the bitch.”

“What about Danae?” he wondered, feeling like pieces of the puzzle were starting to click together. “Is that why she went to France - supposedly - and hasn’t been seen since? Did you infect her too? How many women have you infected, Gavin?”

“I haven’t -” he began, shouting, but then he paused, as he realized his voice might carry through the walls. He visibly steeled himself, then tried again, this time achieving a softer voice. “ - it isn’t like that. I don’ know who had it first, or who gave it to who. Okay? Don’t blame me.”

“But female to male transmission is rare.” Yes, Paris was infected that way, but that woman had figured out how best to do it, and did it deliberately. She was pretty psychotic from being infected, and he wanted to blame her, as it was a horrible thing to do to someone, but somewhere in his heart of hearts, he could understand it. He didn’t approve of it, but he knew where that impulse came from. You couldn’t take out your rage on the virus, so you took it out on others.

He snorted in a kind of laugh and staggered over to the worn, swayback brown corduroy sofa. He tripped before he got there and ended up collapsing on it, but that seemed to suit Gavin just fine. Not only was he completely wasted, but he was still trying to find his coordination through the remaining pain. His change back to Human must have been very recent indeed. “Yeah, well, I got it somehow, didn’t I?”

“Have you ever used intravenous drugs?”

He snorted again, and snagged a beer bottle off the table. Apparently they weren’t all empties. “Do I look like some smack head?”

He glanced at Gavin’s bare arms. He didn’t see any track marks, but then again, he could have shot up in more unobtrusive places. The smart junkies did. “I wasn’t aware there was a look.”

“Yeah, there is. Haven’t you ever heard of heroin chic?”

Roan leaned against the nearest wall, tired, but not desperate enough to attempt to sit in one of the few rickety chairs he had scattered haphazardly around his messy apartment. “Have you had unprotected homosexual sex?”

This time he got a snort and a laugh. “I ain’t no butt pirate.”

Roan felt the urge to say, ”Arr matey, prepare to be boarded,”, but somehow managed to repress the urge. It was still hard not to giggle, though. Still, he wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of questioning, and frankly Gavin was so reeking from cat and sweat and alcohol that it was impossible to say if he was lying or not. “Did you know you were infected when you slept with Thora?”

“No. I ain’t like that.” He swigged down the rest of his beer and tossed the empty bottle aside. It landed on the opposite end of the couch and bounced once before falling to the floor. Gavin didn’t seem to notice or care.

“But you didn’t use a condom?”

Gavin fixed him with a disdainful glare. “What the fuck are you, my sex ed teacher?”

“It might have prevented you from being infected, and from infecting others.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. I think I do wanna pizza now. You wanna get the fuck outta here?”

Roan studied him as the boy limply reached for his telephone, his limbs like rubber, and he realized it all did click, didn’t it? At the end of the day, was there anything more scandalous than a family member riddled with a disease of known perverts and drug addicts? “I will, as soon as you answer a question for me.”

Gavin huffed a sigh impatiently through his nose, his eyes slowly gliding over towards him. “What?”