Times had changed a lot. And sure, he got harassed for being openly gay, he got a lot of shit and no one wanted to partner with him, but most cops knew times were changing and they needed to keep up or die. Women were on the force, minorities, even non-closeted gays every now and again (lesbians were best - most of these macho shitheels were able to accept them far more readily than a gay man of any stripe), so you needed to tolerate them. But there was still a small faction that harkened back to the days when you could just grab a black guy and beat the shit out of him for the temerity of being black and within your sight. They were the overly macho bullies who got off on having authority over people, and they had to make sure other people acknowledged their superiority at all times. Little tyrant gods, ones who felt they were kings of their little kingdoms, and used the badge as a cudgel. The department regulations and insistence on being more PC in these days of phone cameras and lawsuits had winnowed the number of these Neanderthals down … but they still existed. Of course they did. And any cop who denied it was full of shit. It was almost impossible to get rid of them all, simply because this job was the kind that attracted them. This and the military and politics.

He described the vehicle and read off the plate numbers, but even as he did he suspected this wasn’t the man’s car. Of course it wasn’t - no matter how much of a drooling mouth breather he was, he knew not to shit where you ate, euphemistically speaking. Maybe it was an SUV he grabbed from the impound lot. That would also guarantee that any witnesses who came forward would never be able to describe the same car, throwing stories into doubt. An extra layer of protection.

He seemed to be headed towards Dupont, the place where all the strip malls were, and all were closed at this time of night, so the parking lot was bound to be empty. And anybody in that area at that time of night wouldn’t be likely to report anything suspicious anyways. A cop would know the best place to assault someone else.

“Wait a sec,” Murphy said. “You heard him use your name? You have super hearing now?”

“No. It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later … just get some back up headed towards Dupont ASAP. And no lights, sirens or radio chatter. Let’s not tip him off.”

“You think he has a radio with him?”

“He might. Let’s not take the chance.”

She sighed wearily. “You are gonna wait, right? You’re not gonna move in and beat the shit out of him before we get there, are you?”

He couldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep. “There’s a boy with him now. If he starts hurting him I have to move in.”

“Fine. Just … don’t hit him too much in the face, okay? Leave him pretty for his mugshot.”

“Kidney punches it is,” he agreed, somewhat jokingly. Holden was looking at him out of the corner of his eye now, in a way that indicated he wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not, and wasn’t sure if he should be scared or not. That was an expression he’d seen so many times in his life he felt he should try and patent it.

As soon as he was off the phone, Holden said, “I want Kai out of there before shit starts going down.”

“So do I. As soon as things look like they’re going south, pull Kai out of there. Leave the asshat to me.”

Holden’s glance became a stare, but they were at a stop light so it didn’t matter. “You gonna lion out on him?”

He scowled at him. “Don’t call it that.”

“What should I call it? Go all Cat People on him? All American Werewolf In London on him?”

“You know, you’re a prostitute. I can arrest you.”

“You can, but you won’t, because you were always the most decent of them. That’s why they got rid of you.” The light changed to green and Holden turned his attention back to the road, but Roan wasn’t done with this yet.

“Decent? I beat up a drunk redneck who could hardly defend himself.”

“What had he done?”

“What?”

“You didn’t just do it because he was there, did you?”

He sighed and looked ahead at the SUV, its tail lights spots of crimson in the dark. “He beat up his wife and terrorized his kids. It was the kids that made me snap, and he hadn’t even touched them.” And it was; that was the odd truth of the matter, something he had only been able to explain to Paris. The wife with the black eye and bloody lip was bad enough, mascara running down her face like ebony tears. But the kids - two girls, three and six - pushed him beyond reason. The three year old was crying hysterically, as you would expect, but the six year old sat very quietly, her face pale but her eyes somewhere else, as she had grown so accustomed to this, to the beatings and the screaming and the terrorizing that she was growing inured to it. She was already building up a hard shell to deal with this shit, and emotionally withdrawing from a world that was far too painful for her to deal with. He knew that look and he knew that feeling; he had been that kid. And suddenly he couldn’t bear doing nothing.

And what they were doing was nothing. Yes they’d take the husband in, book him, and even if the wife declined to press charges - most sadly did, and just wanted their abuser out of the house for a night - the state had changed the laws so they could still level abuse charges against him without the victim’s consent, but even then it wouldn’t add up to much. A couple months at most? And that was the best case scenario. Most likely was a suspended sentence with mandatory anger management and maybe Alcoholic Anonymous, and he’d be back in the house, doing as the court told him and smacking her and the kids around afterwards, probably telling them it was all their fault. He couldn’t just imagine this, he could see it in his mind’s eye, and he could see this little girl growing up and perpetuating the cycle of abuse by taking up with a boyfriend just like dear old dad.

At the time, it was almost an out of body experience. He saw himself grab this man, who was giving his partner shit - he had tuned him out completely, maybe because he was taking a statement from the wife - and throw him into a wall. Before he even bounced off it, Roan kicked his knees out and punched him in the side of the throat, making him gag as he kicked him in the kidneys hard enough that he probably pissed blood for two weeks after. At the time, he didn’t quite understand why he had gotten so mad, or why he seemed to lose control of himself, but now he understood. The lion had come out; it was pure, animalistic rage that made him pound that man until blood drooled from his mouth and his eyes swelled almost completely shut. He came back to himself as he was snarling in the man’s ear, “I know where you live. Touch them again, and they will never find your body you redneck piece of shit.”

The guy was so drunk he only remembered Roan tossing him down the stairs, without the Roan tossing him part. Except Roan wasn’t so sure about that. He caught the guy looking at him once from his hospital bed with a sort of stark fear, like he’d actually seen death and didn’t want to see it again. Had he lied? Why would he lie when he could sue the police department for millions? There was only one reason he could think of, something that had scared even a bully like him so much he wanted to avoid seeing Roan ever again for the entirety of his life.

How much of the lion had come out? His partner at the time was a tall, solidly built rookie named Tarika Multon (women were more likely to partner with him than men), and it was her testimony that he had intervened when the man started getting “aggressive” that probably helped save him from more severe treatment. But had she seen something and not told him? Had she seen some of the lion coming out? He knew he had a pounding headache after the whole thing, but he chalked it up to the rage. Now he knew that was a partial transition hangover, like the one that was pounding out a Neil Peart drum solo in his frontal lobe right now.

She never said anything, she never seemed scared of him, but she had mastered the poker face. Shortly after he left the force, she moved to California; last he heard, she was a cop somewhere in the San Diego area. Had he scared her off like he scared off the redneck? He didn’t know.

But it was a weird coda to his brief and turbulent life as a cop. He finally met the worst monster he could ever imagine … and it was himself. If life was a film, he’d been hoping his was a Sidney Lumet, but at some point it had become a David Cronenberg, and it had never turned back.

“Sounds like he was asking for it to me,“ Holden said, jolting him out of his reverie.

“It doesn’t matter what he did. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Holden smirked in that slightly superior way of his. “Take it from me, hon: some people honestly deserve to get the shit beaten out of them. Such as this fuckhead ahead of us.”

“How’s Kai doing?”

“Amazingly well. This guy keeps asking him leering, degrading questions like does he like to get fucked - you can just hear the contempt in his voice - and Kai keeps turning it around on him, saying things like “Is that what you like?” “ Holden shook his head, and said admiringly, “The kid’s a pro. He’s not even breaking a sweat.”

That was actually good. If he was right about the psychology of this guy, he needed his victims to reveal a little vulnerability before he started pounding on them. He needed to wedge the boot in psychologically or emotionally before he started the real beating. This was all about control and dominance. Kai was giving him nothing, just presenting a professional façade that was the emotional equivalent of a brick wall. The guy didn’t know it, but it was probably good for him as well. If he was right about Kai, Kai was an emotionally brutalized time bomb. Oh sure, he looked like a twink, but Roan had a feeling he was a hell of a lot more dangerous than he looked. Swallowed rage always came out, and often when it did, it wasn’t pretty. Look what happened to that drunk redneck when his finally boiled over.

The Explorer turned into the empty, partially lit parking lot of the Dupont Circle strip mall, just like Roan guessed, and he told Holden to drive around and come in the back way, so he didn’t see them. Roan figured they could park in the loading area and walk around. The streetlights were out in the northwestern corner of the lot, so they could sneak up from there.

As they were getting out of the car, Holden asked, “Are you carrying a gun?”

Roan decided not to answer that, although he was carrying his Sig Sauer. “Why?”

“Can I have it? I mean, clearly you don’t need it”

“Just get Kai out, and stand clear.”

Holden frowned at him. “Glory hog.”

He rolled his eyes. If he could find some glory he would definitely hog it, but somehow he had a feeling the mall just didn’t have any glory for sale.

Holden followed him, trying to move quietly, the sounds of cars on the street a noise like distant surf, although he could almost hear the ghost noises of voices through Holden’s earpiece. They sounded like the voices of cartoon insects almost, thin and small, although he couldn’t tell what they were saying. It didn’t sound like angry shouting, though.

He ducked down and peered around the corner of the Starbucks, locating the Explorer in the lot quite easily. In spite of the tinted windows, he knew a light was on inside the SUV. Theoretically that would make it harder for whoever was inside to see outside, but he knew better than to count on that. “How’s it going?” he asked Holden.

“Weird. Kai keeps asking him what he wants, but he keeps insisting that he just wants Kai to answer his questions. It’s like an office visit with the world’s most creepy psychiatrist.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” He started to move out, across the lot, sticking to the pools of shadows created by the broken street lamps.

He was maybe a few hundred feet from the Explorer when there was movement inside the SUV so sudden that Roan saw the vehicle tremble on its shocks. “He just grabbed him,” Holden reported.

“Right.” Fuck stealth; stealth time was over.

He ran to he driver’s side door and tried to open it, only to find it locked. Son of a bitch. So Roan let his anger out and punched the glass of the driver’s side window.

Simultaneously, bones in his hand broke as the window shattered, and he heard an unfamiliar voice, much deeper than Kai’s, blurt, “What the fuck -?!”

The pain sent needles of agony sliding down his arm and up his nerves, jamming somewhere in his spinal column, but he was almost experiencing it at a clinical, removed level, as if he’d left his own body again. His eyes must have changed because his vision had changed, but he was so distant he wasn’t sure if anything else had. Again, the jaw was usually the first to change, along with the eyes, but adrenaline rush was wiping the pain out, making it a distant echo of somebody else’s problem.

Roan grabbed the man by his bristly, brush cut hair and slammed his head down hard against the steering wheel, which he met with a sick thud. He was not unconscious, but he was so dazed he slumped back and did nothing as Roan reached through and flipped open the automatic locks, allowing Holden to open the passenger side door and grab Kai. Kai must have been hit, as his lip was split open and the smell of his blood was making Roan dizzy, but as Holden grabbed him under the arms and yanked him out of the Explorer, Kai turned and kicked out, hitting the man square in the face with one of his Doc Martens, breaking his nose with a sound like celery being snapped in half. The man yelped, confirming he was conscious, as well as confirming that Kai, sweet little twink that he was, was incredibly fucking dangerous. In more than one respect, he had picked the wrong victim.

Roan grabbed the cop by one beefy arm and dragged him out of the vehicle. “I’ve always wanted to meet myself. Funny, I thought I had better taste in haircuts.”

The man was a monster. He was about two hundred and thirty pounds of creatine spiked muscles, with huge, muscled arms as big around as a woman’s leg and a chest that could make a barrel feel self-conscious, all packed in blue jeans and a black t-shirt tight enough that it seemed like it was on the verge of exploding off of him in dramatic drag chute fashion. He had a rather squarish head, though, and mean little eyes above a wide brow that his scrub brush haircut did no favors for. He had a hand over his nose, blood dribbling through his fingers, but his look was defiant. “You fucking faggot,” he snapped, sounding very nasal. “That was one of your butt boys, huh?”

“I’m putting you under citizen’s arrest.” Tiny, sharp shocks of pain were emanating from his hand, but Roan had had much worse in his life. Hell, the bones in his hand broke every twenty five days or so, when the viral cycle turned him into a lion. This was almost familiar.

“The fuck you are,” he snarled. “I’m arrestin’ you for assault, you little cocksucker.”

Roan had to use all his willpower to hold the lion back as he made a grab for the cop and deliberately let him avoid it. He jerked aside and punched Roan square in the face. The man had big fists, as hard as concrete, and he saw lights explode in front of his eyes as the impact made him stagger back. The man moved in and buried a fist in his gut, making him double over and feel like he was going to barf up his late dinner, although he squelched the urge.

The man kicked his legs out from underneath him and he hit the macadam hard, blood pouring down his throat as the cop dropped onto his chest and started pounding his fist in his face like he was a nail that needed to be driven into a wall. He was cursing him out the whole time, calling him a little faggot motherfucker and things of that ilk (but if he was a faggot, why would he fuck his mother?) and Roan figured this was long enough. He drove a knee up into the man’s rock hard groin and gave him a stiffened palm right up into his broken nose, shoving the bones back further into his face. He screamed in pain and Roan bucked him off, letting the lion loose.

“Thanks for the evidence,” he snarled, his voice taking on the inhuman gravelly growl of the lion. With all this damage on his face and a broken hand, he could easily level assault charges against this fucking moron. Hadn’t he thought of that? Roan felt his jaw start to shift, sharp pain scissoring through his gums as his fangs poked through the soft, pink flesh. “Now it’s my turn.”