22 – Your Pearly Whites

Roan was floating on a sea of blood. But it was warm and soothing, so he didn’t mind.

It was like he was hovering on a bed of warm, thick air, and it didn’t smell as much as you thought it would. It was very peaceful, and he almost didn’t notice how much pain he was in. But there was pain.

In fact, it was so great his mind seemed to have fuzzed out. Someone had overloaded the speaker, blasted it at a volume beyond eleven, and now nothing sounded right. Nothing felt quite right; it was lopsided somehow, off, and he wasn’t sure if he minded or not. Maybe when he was closer to consciousness.

That was a huge problem. When you were close enough to consciousness to ponder it, you were obviously coming back to it. It was totally unfair.

The floating sensation became a slow sinking sensation, pain growing and dragging him back to Earth. The pain quickly went from excruciating to unbearable, and then moved into an area where vocabulary failed. It felt like he had been crushed, every single bone in his body had been pulverized one by one, his blood broken vessel by vessel, and he would have screamed if he had been capable of doing it without causing him further pain. (Which was impossible, so he couldn’t.)

He laid absolutely still, trying to will the pain to settle like warped boards in an abandoned house, but it never happened. So he had to lay there, aching, hoping he didn’t have to move, but just opening his eyes brought on a pulse of pain.

Where the hell was he? He was in a room with cheap white stucco paint slapped on flimsy walls, moldy green curtains pulled against what looked like radioactive sunlight, and a threadbare carpet some odd color between harvest gold and chewing tobacco.  He smelled bland, horrible industrial laundry detergent coming from the flat pillow he was resting his head on, and figured he was in a very cheap motel, and if he was capable of feeling something beyond pain, he’d feel rough sheets. He groaned deep in his throat, incapable of actually articulating a syllable. He couldn’t move either. Breathing hurt.

Oh shit – he totally transformed, didn’t he? He must have. This was the kind of roaring, angry, malicious pain that only came with a full body warp. What was the last thing he remembered? With all this pain, his memory was even more fragmented, but … running into the house. He had a memory of that, of body tackling someone coming out the door. Then … shit, he didn’t know. Did he bite someone’s throat out? Did that actually happen? He had a sense memory of that, of flesh and muscle between his teeth, but nothing else. Could just be part of his nightmare. (Well, certainly that’s what he wanted to believe.)

From another room – but close – he heard running water and a slightly out of tune male voice singing, “ – I think you should know you’re his favorite worst nightmare -” he heard a door open, smelled fragrant steam, and eventually the man crossed into his limited field of vision. Of course it was Holden, dripping wet and naked save for a thin white towel wrapped around his waist. “Hey, you’re conscious! Hold on a sec, I got something for you.” He disappeared to the other part of the room, and he heard a strange noise. Liquid being shaken in a plastic bottle? Yes, that was it. Finally Holden reappeared with a water bottle not quite half full of water. “Gonna need to drink this. It’s got enough ketamine in it to numb half of Panic, so I bet it’ll make you feel almost Human for five seconds.” He frowned, then said, “Just prop your head up. I’ll dribble it in.”

He guessed he couldn’t move well? Good guess. He leaned his head back, a small movement painful enough to make him wince, and Holden delicately brought the bottle to his mouth and let it trickle down his throat. The water was lukewarm and had a slightly bitter/plastic taste, but Roan was dying of thirst, and the water kind of soothed his ravaged throat when he could force himself to swallow. The bottle was almost empty when he finally started feeling the effects of the ketamine, a gradual warm numbness that started to wash over his agonized body like a healing tide. Once the bottle was drained, Holden walked off, still talking. “I know you can’t get heavier in your lion form, but I swear you were. Holy shit, did I have a hard time dragging you to the Jeep.”

Roan turned over onto his back as the Vitamin K took over, and he could breathe without feeling like someone was punching him in the chest.  “It was a clusterfuck, huh?” His voice was a ghastly rasp. Apparently his throat hadn’t fully healed yet.

“Nope. I’d say it all went off according to plan. We make a hell of a team.” Holden crossed to the room’s lone chair, and held up something flat and black. A hard drive. “You want evidence for the Feds? They can go to town on this.”

“Jordan?”

He shook his head. “We were too late. They killed him long before we got there.”

“Fuck.” He rubbed his eyes, and was glad the drugs had kicked in. He did feel almost Human, although his heart was pounding a bit fast now. “Where did you get the ketamine?”

“They had it. They had a lot of date rape style drugs. Maybe some of the people they killed weren’t getting paid for their time after all.” With no modesty at all, Holden pulled off his towel, showing him his bare ass as he pulled on his underwear. Well, no shock there, Holden seemed to think modesty was overrated.

“What the fuck happened?”

Holden told him that he lioned out (well, duh), and some guys fled, while others attempted to bring him down, and they didn’t fair too well. Also, Holden figuratively lioned out and got a couple himself, but didn’t specify what that meant (although Roan could guess). He then told him about finding Jordan’s body in a freezer in a shed behind the house, and how he decided he needed to get back to the main house, but couldn’t because he was out in his lion form. So he threw out the meat patties that he found in the freezer, hoping that would distract him. It did, apparently, but not enough that he felt safe to run back to the house.  But he lucked out in that it was a hot day and he (the lion) was full, as he went to lay down in the shade and fell asleep. That’s when Holden decided to sneak out, and it was his intention to go back into the house, find some heavy drugs he could dose him with, and then get him out of there, but he didn’t need to. He told him he was already changing back, albeit slowly, when Holden ventured out of the shed (he wanted to ask how so, what that exactly meant, but he was scared to know and didn’t ask). So he just went back into the house, found some drugs he thought he might be able to use later, grabbed some cash, and then lit the place up.

Roan honestly thought it was the drugs at first, and the fact that he felt like he should have been dead, or that dying would have been more merciful at this point. “Lit the place up?” His voice still had yet to recover; he sounded like Harvey Fierstein’s distant cousin.

“Yeah,” he replied casually, pulling up his jeans. “Burn baby, burn.”

“You burned the house down?”

“Of course I did. You probably left blood all over the place, and I’m sure I left fingerprints, and I’ve got a record, so I’m in the system. Better to hasten the ashes to ashes, dust to dust bit.”

Didn’t he know going in that working with Holden was opening a very dark door? These were “his people” these snuff guys were messing with, giving him an extra sense of mission. Roan knew he could only blame himself, as there was only one way this could go. “Aw fuck, Holden …”

“What? It hasn’t even been reported on the news yet. I’ve watched the morning and noon local broadcasts, and no mention of it. Either no one noticed it, or no one cared. “

“You know what the horrible thing is? You can do more time for arson than you can for some murders.”

“Probably. But we won’t get caught.”

“Oh really? You have a magic wand?”

“I knew this kid called Sparky for many years on the street. He was a pyro, total headcase. Remember that rash of fires downtown about ten years ago? All him. He said watching stuff burn made him feel better.”

It was hard for him to think through the sludge of drugs and pain, but he finally got it. “Ten years ago? They never caught anyone for those.” The fires were mainly at abandoned and vacant buildings, and transients were initially blamed, but the cops were forced to revise their initial supposition when there was an explosion of similar fires that were too close in style to be called copycats. From what he understood, the method of ignition was similar in all cases as well. But the fires just stopped before a good suspect could be found, leading to speculation that he (and it was usually a he) was in prison for another crime.

“No, but Sparky was good. I just copied what he did. Who knows, maybe they’ll blame Sparky for this one too. I doubt he’d care.”

“What happened to him?”

“Sparks? Oh, he got bored of the scenery, hopped a bus to Miami. Have there been a string of fires down there? That’ll let us know he stayed.”

He almost asked Holden why he didn’t drop a hint to the cops, but why would he? He didn’t trust cops, and ratting a fellow street kid out was a no no.  At least the fires hadn’t killed anyone (that he knew of). He’d have been more indignant if someone had died. “How many people did I kill?”

Holden pulled on his t-shirt – a new one, or at least new to him; it advertised a Yakima titty bar called Sugar’s, which was funny on a couple of different levels if you knew Holden – and replied, “I don’t know. Maybe no one. I didn’t count.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I deliberately didn’t count, didn’t check for life signs. You know why? Because I knew you would ask, and I wanted to give you a truthful answer. I do not know, I never knew.  I don’t know how many ran away either. I don’t know if the second guy I shot died.  I can live with the ambiguity.”

“And you think I can? Wait a minute – you shot two people?”

“One of them killed Coyote. The other pulled a rifle on me. I feel justified in both cases.”

He wanted to shake his head, but couldn’t, because of the pain and because the drugs were really kicking in big time now, and that floating sensation was coming back. It was very nice, he could see how people got addicted to this stuff, but it was also very precarious. He had the sense that he was balanced on the edge of a razor blade, and movement one way or another would slice him in half.  “I didn’t want this to turn into a bloodbath.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. But how else was it gonna end?” Holden came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “I know you’re a good guy, Roan. It’s endearing, if slightly naive. But I’m not, and you knew that. That’s why you brought me in. You want to heap guilt on someone, heap it on me. I can take it.” He then leaned over and kissed Roan gently on the forehead before giving him a bittersweet sort of smile. “No one’s better than whores for absolution.”

He glared up at him, trying to push his anger through the haze of pain and drugs. He had no idea if it got through. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Do I?” he asked, with such false cheerfulness he knew he was being set up. “I’m not your assistant investigator because I’m eye candy, although I’m that too, if I don’t say so myself, nor am I a great detective. I’m your assistant because I will always back your play, because you being in any form of lion will never shock me, and because I’m so motherfucking ruthless it kinda scares you at times. I get the job done, and we never discuss the cost.” He then broke into a grin that was somewhat gleeful and somewhat guileless, a hard combination that was all the more chilling for its improbability. “How awesome is it that I’m muscle? Rent boy muscle. Wow, I think I just found a new line of work when I get too old to sell my ass.” He stood up and made a dramatic gesture with his arms, like he was unveiling a magic trick. “What do you think – Fox the Gigolo Assassin? How awesome would those business cards be?”

Roan sighed and continued to glare, but now he realized Holden didn’t care. He could scorn him all day, and he would ignore it. “Do you want me to fire you?”

“You wouldn’t. I work for a kind word and a pat on the ass. You’ll never find anyone else that cheap.”

“Are you psychotic and I just didn’t realize it until now?”

“Now don’t be insulting. You know I’m not a psycho. I’m just icily pragmatic. Fuck that whole hooker with a heart of gold stereotype, I’ve got a heart of stone. And you can’t say you didn’t know that.”

As he walked across the room, Roan knew he was right. Of course he was right. He brought Holden into this because he didn’t have to worry about him if things went wrong (which they had), and it wasn’t just because he was a survivor. After all, why was he a survivor? It wasn’t because he was a born peacemaker. He’d said it himself: if it was us or them, they didn’t have a chance.

His head was pounding along with his heart, but it wasn’t painful per se, just weird. Ketamine was a powerful – and powerfully addictive – drug,  he knew from having seen it used on Danny Nakamura that it could fucking kill you, but he wasn’t worried about it. Shouldn’t he have been? Then again, he’d survived an elephant tranquilizer overdose, so why would any drug worry him? What should worry him was the fact that a full transformation was still hard on him physically, and getting harder all the time. Eventually, he’d transform and the change back would kill him. He might have been adapting to the virus, but the body still had limits, and he couldn’t count on it to bail him out forever. He had to stop the full transformations.

Now how the hell did he do that?

He was able to move his arm without screaming, so he rubbed his hideously dry eyes, and wondered if he could ignore the guilt. Would he fall in a K-hole and forget everything? That was a wonderfully tempting thought. Suddenly, he realized what Holden said. “Noon news? What time is it?”

“Just going on one.”

“Shit.” He made to move quickly, and suddenly the one two punch of pain and drugs knocked him flat to the mattress. Okay, he rushed it; he needed to take this in stages. So much for adaptation. “Oh fuck. Dylan.”

“Will probably chew you out a bit, but will be so grateful you’re alive it’ll be perfunctory.  He’s crazy about you, old man, and I gave him a story he will be happy to buy. Just be glad I’m such a good liar.”

He stared at Holden. “You told him what?”

Holden sat down on the edge of the chair and cracked open a soda he probably got from a vending machine. “Actually I called Fiona and asked her to do it, ’cause Dylan would get suspicious if it came from me.”

“Why would he think it was suspicious if it came from you?”

He took a deep gulp of the soda, burped, and put it on the arm of the chair. “Hooker over here. You forget?”

“So? Dylan knows I’m not interested in you like that.”

Holden nodded, and nodded in a strange way, like he was humoring him. “He thinks I have a thing for you, though.”

“I never told him you said you’d fuck me for free.”

He grinned, but it had an edge to it, like it was sarcastic or he didn’t quite believe him. “Well then, he used his creepy boyfriend mojo and figured it out.”

“Creepy boyfriend mojo?”

“Some gay guys get it. They know an actual threat when they see one.”

“Threat? You’re not a threat.”

“Tell that to the guys I shot.”

That wasn’t the kind of threat he meant and he knew it, but Holden was content to dodge the comment , and Roan was too tired to pursue it. He’d put it on the “for later” shelf. “What did you tell Fiona to tell him?”

Apparently it was, like all good lies, wrapped around a kernel of truth. Supposedly Roan had trailed this cheating guy all the way up to Gig Harbor, and got in a car accident up there. He was knocked unconscious – but no real damage done – and taken to a local hospital, but they found one of his false IDs in his wallet and just assumed that’s who he was. Roan woke up in the hospital and realized the mistake, but rather than correct it, he’d snuck out of the hospital and was now on his way home. He called Fi to tell Dylan because he was sure he’d get pissed at him. Although there was some plausibility stretching, it wasn’t totally out of line, and really, that was probably the best lie to cover both his absence and subsequent drugged up painfulness when he got home. Holden really was the Hemingway of liars.

Carefully, with great concentration, Roan sat up, and turned, so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Putting his feet on the floor felt like a minor triumph. He was naked, which was a given (clothes didn’t usually survive the transition – how the Hulk kept his pants on he would never know), but there wasn’t any blood on him, which was highly unusual. “Did you clean me up?”

“Yeah. All that blood on motel sheets? It may be a dive that doesn’t ask questions, but a sheet like a bloody shroud? They might ask a question.”

Fair enough. In fact, good thinking. Sometimes he forgot how smart he was, and Holden was more than happy that people forgot, even him.

Roan really had to keep that in mind. As assistants went, he was the best. But as an enemy? Fuck no, he would never want to face that scenario.

Maybe it was ungrateful and bitchy, but at least Roan could take minor consolation in the fact that his rage got the better of him sometimes due to sharing space with the lion, a biological balancing act that got harder the angrier he got. But what was Holden’s excuse?

21 – Animal

Holden was still arguing about payment when the shit went down.

He’d heard the huge bang, the collision shortly behind them when they were driving in, but couldn’t see anything as they were too far ahead. He hoped that Roan wasn’t involved in that, but if he was, he was determined to see this through without him. He had a gun, a knife, and an urge to kill these motherfuckers, who probably wouldn’t expect him to put up much of a fight – surely that was good enough.

Once they got here, they sat in the living room and smoked pot, had some beers, and discussed what was going to happen. Holden was deliberately fickle, changing his mind about doing a group sex scene, and then wanting more money, which played out the time. Also, he didn’t really hold in the pot smoke, nor did he do more than sip his beer. He wasn’t going to get fucked up, but he was happy to let them think he was going to. It also helped that  the pot they had was total weak sauce. He knew guys who drove in much better B.C. bud on alternate weekends. Drugs wasn’t really his thing, but if he  was going to do some, he liked to do the good stuff.

He eventually snuck off to the bathroom, and lounged in there for a bit, eating up more time. Checking the phone, he found his connection dead. Natural drop off, or was Roan really plowed into? Shit, he hoped he was okay.

What was he thinking? The guy was a superhero. He’d be fine.

Holden saw a few closed doors on the way to the basement, but he had a weird feeling that he was the only true “guest” in the house today. Which meant what about Jordan? Probably nothing good.

The basement was just a basement, although it seemed a bit more Western Washington than Eastern Washington to him for reasons he couldn’t actually explain. The walls and floor were poured concrete, the lighting harsh and basically fluorescent, the set up very basic porn, what with a bed, a chair, and two digital cameras on tripods, with a computer set up tucked away in the back corner. It smelled like sweat, sex, ozone, and Febreeze. There was the guy in charge of the cameras, “Lenny”, an average looking pear shaped guy with thinning curly black hair and an underbite he really should have had seen to as a child, while his two fellow “performers” were “Alex”, a reasonably buffed up guy with a bland face and a smattering of back hair, and “Rex”, a more handsome but almost tragically skinny guy who had the build of Iggy Pop, and the tattoo on his calf (a rather ornate scene of the Virgin Mary, roses, and a bleeding heart) seemed to draw far too much attention to his toothpick legs. He recognized Alex from the video where they killed Coyote.

They all took off their shirts and discussed what was going to be happening when Holden balked again, this time pointing out he was not a bottom unless he got paid a hell of a lot of cash, and nobody had mentioned anything about barebacking. (Honestly, if you wanted to fuck him, you really did need to pony up a lot of dough, to the point where he just solicited as a top, because most people couldn’t afford him otherwise.) They started dickering about the cash again, which he internally found hilarious, as these guys were going to give him the money, kill him, and take the money back. So why not just give it to him without a fight? Dickheads! It made him dial up the diva behavior.

They had just about reached a resolution when they heard the screams from upstairs, followed by an almost simultaneous gunshot, and a roar that could chill the blood. All four of them looked at each other, Holden feigning surprise (it was really hard not to laugh), and Lenny exclaimed, “What the fuck was that? Was that a bear?”

“Ah fuck, I bet it’s that fag detective,” Rex said, racing up the basement stairs. “He said he might be coming.”

He? Maddux? He might never know.

“No Human makes a sound like that,” Alex called after him, as the sound came again, more gunshots, more screams, another roar. The roar alone told him Roan was gone. When he was half transformed, you could almost hear a little bit of a Human scream of rage underneath it, just barely, a tiny little lifeline that let you know you weren’t completely fucked yet. But this was the completely fucked noise, the one that told you the Human had checked out and the lion had checked in. Doctor Jekyll had left the building, but Hyde was hanging around, waiting to start some shit.

Alex was nervously peering up the stairs, and Lenny walked back to the computer, meaning neither were looking at him. He put his foot on the edge of the bed and reached into his boot, pulling out the Glock. He loved this little thing; he’d been practicing with it, and found it not only easy to pull and use, but a hell of a lot of fun. He had to ask Roan if he could buy it from him if they both lived through this.

“Alex,” Holden said.

“What?” he replied, annoyed, still trying to look up the stairs.

“Would you at least look at me when I kill you?”

That made him turn around. “What?”

And that’s when Holden shot him in the chest. A hole appeared in the center of his naked torso and blood exploded all over the back wall as Alex staggered, staying on his feet, looking genuinely stunned. Lenny yelped in shock and dove behind the computer desk like a soldier seeking cover.

“Coyote was one of my boys, motherfucker,” Holden told Alex, before he finally  tripped on the bottom stair and fell down, first against the now blood smeared wall, now onto the concrete floor. He tried to press himself up, but his hands slipped in his own blood, and he went face first into the floor. He coughed, choked, made one more attempt as a wide, shockingly deep red puddle grew wider and wider around him, and then stopped attempting to get up. Upstairs, more gunshots, screaming, the thud of bodies, and roars made a din loud enough to guarantee the calvary didn’t come charging down the stairs. Holden imagined he should have felt something, but he saw this fucker strangle Coyote, garrote him until he stopped moving. He deserved this. He honestly deserved so much worse.

“Hiding, Lenny? You really wanna die wedged beneath a desk?” If it looked like the cameraman was coming up with a weapon, he was going to blow his fucking brains out.

But Lenny must have known this, because he emerged hands first, shaking so badly his voice was a mass of tremors. “D-don’t sh-shoot me, p-please, don’t k-kill me. I didn’t hurt any-anyone, I d-didn’t- -”

“No, you simply filmed it and uploaded it for the masses, so that makes you a far better person. You wanna live through this? Gimme the hard drive.”

Sweat was now streaming down his acne spotted face. He was probably twenty five, but he had the kind of face that would make him look awkwardly adolescent until his mid-thirties. “Wh-what?”

He was running out of time. He might actually be out of time, so fuck it. “Hard drive, now!” he shouted, in a drill sergeant voice. (And he should know, as he had one as a client once. Really liked being spanked.)

Lenny jumped and almost lunged into action, grabbing the computer stack and working its casing off. He looked up at him suspiciously, working with shaking hands, and said, “You’re not a hooker.”

“Course I’m a hooker.”

He seemed deeply suspicious of this. “But you’re with him.” He looked up towards the ceiling, where the monster movie sounds of inhuman roars and all too Human screams continued.

“Yep. Us fags stick together.” Lenny briefly got a guilty look in his pale hazel eyes, just confirming what Holden had already guessed: not a single gay here. All gay for pay. What, couldn’t they find a gay psychopath who would happily fuck and kill another guy on screen? Surely there were a few who’d volunteer. It was discrimination, that’s what it was.

He’d pried the cover off, and started digging out the hard drive, with no delicacy whatsoever. Luckily, Holden didn’t care what shape it was in, as long as he got it. Lenny was still shaking, and trying to pretend he wasn’t. Fear had made his deodorant fail, and he was starting to give off an odor not unlike canned tamales. He wanted to shoot him just for that. “Can you call him off?”

He didn’t need to ask what “him” he was referring to. “No. How do you call off a lion? It’s not like you can train them to heel.” And this was the only thing bothering him right now. Roan wasn’t almost transformed, he was fully transformed; bringing up Dylan or even Paris would have no effect on him now. And what great irony would that be if Roan ate him and killed him after all this?

Lenny yanked the hard drive out like it was a rotten tooth. “He’s not even fucking Human. He should be locked up.”

“This from the snuff filmmaker. Put the drive on the desk and start moving towards the stairs. Slowly. Any sudden moves, and I kneecap you.”

Lenny shot him an evil look, but did as he said, keeping his hands where he could see him. “What kinda hooker are you?”

“An action hooker.” He almost laughed as he said it. Okay, maybe the pot did have some minor effects.

Lenny looked down nervously at Alex, laying face down in a pool of blood almost as big as he was. He paled, looked like he might be sick, which made Holden wonder if he tossed his cookies every time he filmed one of these snuff clips. Probably not. It was probably different when you actually knew the person killed. “If you don’t want me to kill you, you’d better start running.”

His head snapped towards him violently. “You mean go upstairs?” As if to emphasize what a silly, suicidal prospect that was, Roar roared very loudly, a sound that chilled the blood with its mindless, animalistic rage. He was a hurt cat, and he’d be damned if he knew what hurt him, so he was going to take down everyone in sight on the off chance he’d eventually get the one responsible. Holden wondered how many people were left upstairs. The smart ones must have run out of the house at the first opportunity, while the stupid ones went for guns. Natural selection in action. “I can’t -”

“Stay here and get shot, or go upstairs and see if you can get away before he finds you. Make your choice.”

It was no choice, and the evil look he gave him told Holden he knew it. But Lenny had seen him kill Alex, so he knew shooting him too would be nothing. There came a point when your sins were so great you couldn’t possibly make them worse, and Holden was there, at that zero point where he had absolutely nothing to lose. Lenny swallowed hard, probably made some attempt to gather his courage, and attempted to avoid the blood and Alex’s body as he ascended the wooden staircase. Holden kept his gun trained on it until he heard the door open, letting in the noise of someone’s stereo, playing faintly, a background noise to the carnage. The basement wasn’t really well soundproofed, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, it didn’t need to be.

As soon as Lenny was gone, Holden put the Glock down long enough to pull on his shirt and stick the hard drive in the waist of his jeans, like it was just a bigger, bulkier gun. He checked to make sure the cameras weren’t on (they hadn’t been switched on yet), and that there wasn’t a slaved back up drive that he missed. He was aware of another scream upstairs, and wondered if Roan had caught Lenny.

The pot was giving this all a patina of illusion. It hardly seemed real, so maybe that’s why he wasn’t too worried about facing Roan. He had to go upstairs; the basement was a prison. There were no windows to the outside, no cellar door. It was go up, or be stuck in here until Roan went outside to hunt down the unlucky assholes who had to escape on foot, assuming he did. Since he could change at will, he could presumably change back at will, but since he was all lion when the cat came out, how did the Human will the change? There was a philosophical, emotional, and medical conundrum that no one had the answer to, not even Roan.

He checked the cameras to make sure they didn’t have any drives he should remove, and found one had a portable case, so he simply put it in and slung the case over his back. The other camera he destroyed, first by throwing it against the wall, and then adding insult to injury by shooting it. He was pretty sure there’d be no evidence to salvage, but he wanted to make sure.

He went to the head of the stairs and pressed his ear against the door, listening. It was hard to determine what was going on now, as it was rather quiet, but he was pretty sure he heard Roan’s low level growl, which was enough to make your average person shit their pants. What he’d never told him and frankly never would, because he knew how badly he’d take it, was that his growl only sounded like a lion’s (or some other big cat) when he was still in some vestige of Human form. When he was fully transformed, it honestly sounded monstrous – it was a cross between lion and dragon, something sort of recognizable crossed with the unbelievable. It worked well, though; it made you want to start running and keep running until you dropped.

Holden knew the bathroom wasn’t far from the basement door, and there was a window in there that, while small, was still big enough for him to pull himself through. If he could get there, he could get out of the house and check the back shed, which he saw while walking from the car to the front door. He didn’t know if they kept people back there or what, but he knew Roan wouldn’t forgive him if he didn’t check it out.

Relatively sure Roan was in another part of the house, he eased the door open, wincing as a hinge creaked, and as the smell of blood hit him. It had been in the basement, but it smelled even more bloody up here. The front door must have been open, because dry air was blowing in from the desert, kicking up the scent of meat, moving it through the house.

He went fast, slinking from the basement to the bathroom door, not running, because running just encouraged a cat to come after you. (Oh, had he forgot to tell Lenny that? Oops.) He didn’t see anything in his quick shift from one room to another, save for what looked like a splash of blood on one of the walls of the main corridor and a fallen gun. As he ducked into the bathroom, a shadow crossed the head of the hall, and he heard Roan’s growl, much louder now. Holden closed the door and thumbed the doorknob lock. It was as flimsy as hell, and if the lion threw himself full force against it the door would break like construction paper, but he didn’t need it to hold for long. Just long enough for him to get away.

He heard Roan at the door, growling and snuffing, claws ripping at the carpet as if trying to reach under the door. Right now lion Roan was tentative, testing the borders, but as soon as he realized it was solid he would go after it in earnest until something pulled his attention away. At least this confirmed no one got a decent shot on him.

He had to stand on the toilet to reach the window latch and push the window up, then he had to punch the screen out, but none of that was difficult. It occurred to him that Roan as a lion was kind of like a guy on crack. They weren’t invincible, but goddamn, they could seem like it, as they were so painless nothing seemed to stop them. It was instant killshot or nothing.

He pulled himself through the window until he could sit on the sill, then carefully pulled leg one through, then the other. He knew he was starting to put on weight – he could exercise and limit carbs all he wanted, but he was getting older, and your metabolism naturally slowed down – but at least he wasn’t so chubby that he couldn’t squeeze through the window. Not that it wasn’t a tight fit. He made sure to close the window after him, on the off chance Roan broke the door down.

He jumped down to the back yard, which wasn’t a proper yard at all, just barren scrub land that was eventually defined by a chain link fence that glimmered silver on the horizon like a mirage. The sky was starting to lighten, the sun coming up somewhere out of his view, and already the cool bite of morning was starting to warm. It would be an insanely hot day, so Holden hoped to be far from here before afternoon could roast him alive. At least it would be a good day for burning.

The shed was an extra big garden shed with peeling green and white paint that couldn’t have looked more out of place in this landscape. Since obviously no one was gardening out here, what could possibly be in it? He had a sinking feeling that it probably held something sinister.

As he was walking towards it, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw a guy who was crouching beside the house, holding a rifle. His head was turned towards  the house, as if he was listening for Roan, so Holden saw him first. He’d raised the Glock by the time the guy finally noticed him, doing the slightest double take, and he could see the curiosity in his eyes: What’s the whore doing out here? But he didn’t let the confusion stop him from swinging the rifle around and taking aim at him.

But he didn’t have a chance, as Holden had him in his sights the whole time. He pulled the trigger first, and the guy, who was dressed in all black clothing and had one gay ass bushy mustache, jolted as he was hit and sprawled on his back on the ground. Holden walked over to him and didn’t bother to see where the bullet had hit, he just saw he was wide eyed and staring up at him as Holden took his rifle away and slung it over his shoulder. “How many more of you are there?” When the guy didn’t answer right away, Holden kicked him in the leg.

“I dunno! Some guys took off, took the car. Is it still alive?”

“Alive, angry, probably about to come outside to see where its prey went. I’d find somewhere to hole up if I were you.”

He was breathing hard through his mouth, panting. He had a hand over his stomach, and blood was seeping through his fingers. Having been stabbed in the stomach, Holden knew how much that hurt. “This was a set up.”

He scoffed as he walked away, headed back towards the shed. “Your first clue should have been the fact that my name is Fox, asshole. We’re tricksters, each and every one of us.”

The shed wasn’t locked, which may have been the only positive sign. Opening it, he smelled something like fertilizer and old oil, and saw bags of quick lime piled in the corner. Didn’t that dissolve bodies? Okay, the bad feeling was back again.

There was a freezer humming away, plugged in under the tiny postage stamp window on the left hand side, one of those low horizontal ones like his Mom had tucked away in the garage when he was growing up. It usually held sides of beef, trout his Dad’s friends would bring him after fishing trips. He bet the odds that there was something that innocuous in there was low.

He shut the door and dragged a bag of quick lime over, putting it in front of the door. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it would make opening the door difficult, giving him time to pull his gun and shoot first. He tucked the Glock in the front pocket of his jeans (it kinda fit, mainly because these were his slightly oversized pants), and took a moment to steel himself before opening the freezer.

The banality of the contents almost shocked him. Frozen pizzas, Popsicles, pre-made frozen beef patties in plastic bags – it was just food. Guy food certainly (were there no women involved in this enterprise, beyond victims?) but just food. He let out a sigh of relief and almost laughed when he saw something odd tucked up against the near side of the freezer. He wasn’t sure what it was at first, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be a Human thumb. Attached to a hand, attached to an arm, attached to something else.

He started pulling boxes out of the freezer, throwing them on the floor, and when he cleared away a stack of Popsicles boxes, he found a face staring through a plastic bag. He wasn’t a hundred percent certain, but it looked like Jordan Hatcher. “Aw fuck.” So Roan was right – his odds of being alive had been low. Now they were non-existent.

He sank to the floor, sitting with his back to the still humming freezer, and wondered how he was going to get Roan out of here alive.

20 – Red Line Season

The next couple of days were purely devoted to getting ready for the sting on the snuff guy’s place. It felt like a sting operation, only he wasn’t a cop anymore; he was going in alone. Yes, Holden would be there, but he was bait, the undercover guy in the room. It was all on him alone to ingress, to get in without getting Holden killed. He still had no idea how many people he’d be dealing with, or what manner of security precautions. It was all guesswork, therefore inherently impossible to plan for, and yet here he was trying. Was this  another definition of insanity?

He arranged many things. He made sure Tank and Grey knew he needed Dylan and Fiona protected on that day (night) especially, and arranged a car. He couldn’t use either muscle car for the tail, they were too noticeable, but renting a car might not be a great idea. Some of them could be traced, mileage would be noted. But he still knew the guys at the auto yards that Paris knew, and he managed to arrange to pick up a car from them, a fairly anonymous ‘02 Honda that was due to get torn up for parts once he was done with it. As soon as he returned it, it would be reduced to scrap. This guy in particular, Javier, didn’t ask why he wanted the car, nor what he planned to do with it; he knew he was a detective, and figured it was a “detective thing”. All he asked was he paid for the car if he couldn’t return it, which seemed fair enough.

Roan realized he was taking way too many pills, but he felt it was probably insurance. He would be on a minimum of pills during the trail, because he wanted to be as sharp as possible. Of course that a meant a couple of pills because he was remarkably functional on pills, but not the really heavy ones. Tylenol codeine maybe. Of course he’d have a bottle of Percocet standing by for after, because he already guessed he’d be in so much pain he’d be moving like he was full of broken bones and acidic blood.

Gordo told him the white supremacist link was confirmed, at least between the guys that had come after him and the shooter at the church. They were a little fringe group, and they had some kind of online hate page where they preached the usual bullshit about the Bible coming out against the children of Satan (which supposedly infecteds were), with the added tinge of racism (the infecteds would “dilute” the snowy white Aryan bloodline, like that was a bad thing with these particular inbred morons). Roan couldn’t help but ask how they could think he would pollute anyone’s bloodline, as he was one hundred percent gay and had no intention of being a breeder, but Gordo couldn’t answer that one. He admitted this had occurred to him as well, and just assumed they meant viral infection or something along those lines, but again, that didn’t make a lot of sense, unless they expected him to buttfuck their members any time soon. (And while he was flattered they would think of him, he had no interest in their flabby, spotty behinds.)

Dylan knew something was going on, but of course Roan couldn’t tell him what, and they fought a bit, although not as much as he honestly anticipated. So that’s why he decided to entertain Dylan’s suggestion that he actually do an interview with this guy who both called and emailed him. His name was Aidan Lambert, and apparently he wrote for some magazine Roan had never heard of. He was doing an article on ten people whom he felt were changing the world but were as of yet relatively obscure, and he wanted to throw Roan in the mix. He thought he was trying to be funny (sarcastic?), but then the guy reeled off facts that he knew, but was still surprising to hear. Roan was the first (known) fully functional virus child, the first openly infected police officer in the United States (really? The entire country?), was the oldest living infected to date (tell him about it), and was the only person recognized legally as a bloodhound (okay, he didn’t say “bloodhound”, but that was the gist) due to his superior and measurable sense of smell. Aidan explained that he knew the infecteds didn’t have an actual organized group, but if they did, he was pretty sure he’d be their leader, because who better?

What a weird thought. Here he was, preparing to fuck some people up, and this guy was touting him as the leader of the infecteds. If that were actually true, the normals were in so much trouble.

Wait a minute. Weren’t they already?

He told him he’d think about it. He didn’t want to do any interview, but Dylan wanted him to, and the guy did sound weirdly sincere (and he had done his homework, which he had to give him credit for). Dylan said it might give fellow infecteds some hope, but if he was supposed to give them hope, they were totally fucked. But then again, they were. Could he make it worse? It was just a weird thing to throw on his “to do” pile, along with Rosenberg scanning the shit out of him and him and Dylan signing up for the domestic partnership registry.

He prepped the car like he would for any long stake out: snacks, pills, and liquids, along with a piss bottle, so he didn’t have to make a stop while tailing these guys. Of course he might have to stop for gas if they went an insanely long way, but he hoped they weren’t traveling that far. He also got a hands free headset for his phone, so he wouldn’t have to have his cell wedged up against his ear.

He told Dylan he was off on another cheating husband tail, and wasn’t sure when he’d be back. Dylan thought nothing of this, as he’d done similar jobs a million times before. He picked Holden up at his place, and as always, Holden looked the part he was assuming. He went with looser jeans with holes in the knee and near the crotch as opposed to tight jeans because they were more comfortable in case a fight broke out, but his shirt was white and skin tight, and so thin it probably became translucent when wet, and his motocross style leather jacket said thrift store chic. His biker books looked expensive, though, and hid the Glock nicely. His almond hair had a calculated bedhead look to it, and as he slumped in the passenger seat, he gave him a look of sleepy eyed seduction. “Do I look like a porno movie man whore or what?”

“Please don’t tell me you studied for it.”

“No need to study for it. I was born to play this part.”

“That’s what scares me.”

He dropped him off two blocks away from the bus station, and they checked phone reception as he walked towards the Burger King. It was surprisingly good, which boded well. Roan had to wait a while before a parking spot opened up that had a decent view of the Burger King and the bus station (he had no idea what the snuff guy’s car would be or which exit he would take, so he had to visually cover the biggest area possible). Then he settled in to wait, wishing he could listen to an audio book or something to kill the boredom.

But he didn’t have to wait long. The guys (Roan distinctly heard two different male voices) approached Holden not long after he settled in a window booth, where Roan could clearly see his profile through binoculars. Roan couldn’t get a good look at either man (nor could he hear them clearly; they were too far from Holden and his phone), but he got an impression of young, white, and generic. The three talked for a couple of minutes (he could only hear Holden’s side; it seemed they were setting a price), and then they left. Holden told him they were driving a black Range Rover by acting surprised that was their car and then complimenting it.

Roan watched them drive off, then let a couple cars go before he followed in pursuit. Let them go? Traffic was nuts; he had no hope of pulling out directly behind them anyways.

One guy was sitting closer to Holden than the other. He’d hear snatches of his conversation, a word here or there, and Holden got these guys to talk, so he knew they were in for a long drive. He also knew this guy told Holden (whom he called Fox, of course, because that’s how these guys knew him) to call him “Matt”. No one in that SUV was using their real name; it was a caravan of disingenuous.

The driver, whoever he was, drove like a fucking lunatic on the freeway. Roan knew he was in for a long drive when Matt lit up a joint and offered some to Holden. Although Roan didn’t think it was a smart thing to do, Holden apparently took him up on the offer. Hopefully he could hold his drugs, as he didn’t need the pot making his reflexes sluggish. It would make sense that they’d give drugs to the victims, though. It would make them more pliable, less likely to realize how dangerous things had become.

The drive was insanely long. In fact, when they hit the mountain passes, he realized they were heading to Eastern Washington. Were there two filming sites? A basement is a basement, so if they had one in Eastern Washington and one in Western Washington, who would know? It would allow them to dump bodies in each place as well, hopefully confusing the issue.

Night set in hard, and he almost lost the cell connection on the passes, but it managed to pull itself back from the brink. Holden continued chatting with the guys, asking where they were going, but Matt was evasive – he only said they were going to his Uncle’s place, since his Uncle had moved to Florida. How wonderfully vague. He didn’t even bother to make up a plausible lie! He was offended on Holden’s behalf.

Matt and his friend asked Holden how he got the name Fox (no one was under the illusion that they were using real names), and when he told them he got it because he was “smarter than the average bear”, the guys snickered derisively. But Holden snickered too, and all three men were laughing at something different. Matt and the driver were laughing because they knew Holden was going to his death; Holden laughed because he knew what was in store for Matt and the driver.

Once they were through the mountains, Roan found his natural curiosity battling the exhaustion that was settling in. Where could they be headed? Yakima?

At an intersection, the Range Rover ran a red, and Matt said there were never any cops around here anyways, so it didn’t matter. Roan still waited for the green, and wondered how close the house had to be when he saw a glimpse of dark movement out of the corner of his eye. By the time it registered in his brain that it was a car with its lights off running the red, it crashed into him full force.

Roan remembered impact, the sense of sudden force, glass breaking and metal screaming, but then he must have blacked out, because he didn’t remember anything until he woke up hanging upside down, looking at the ground through a broken windshield.

He was aching, especially his head, and he was tasting blood, but it was different than the blood he tasted when he changed. (Why he had no idea. Different concentrations of chemicals? Viral load?) The sound of liquid hitting the dirt and a small hiss told him the radiator was toast. Actually, since it was a Honda, he was surprised there was anything resembling a car left.

He hit the release on the seat belt, and braced as it retracted and he plunged towards the ceiling (now the floor) of the car. He felt the aches throughout his body, but he knew from being injured too many times in his life that nothing was terribly serious. He gathered up the equipment he needed to find Holden and crawled out the shattered passenger window to discover that the Honda had been knocked to a bit of grassy verge about a hundred feet away from the intersection. He looked back at the Honda, and saw a distinct U bend to it. How was he walking away from this? Maybe his hybrid lifeform status was finally doing him some good. Or all the painkillers he was on.

The car that hit him was sitting half in and half out of the intersection, the driver sitting on the ground beside it, drinking malt liquor from a brown paper bag. The car was a piece of shit Cadillac, old enough to be mostly steel and therefore hardly scratched by impact, mostly primer grey with yellowed ivory peeling off like teeth with bad enamel. “You came outta nowhere, bud,” the guy said. He had long, lank, greasy black hair, which was thinning so much in front it looked like he was wearing a two part wig with a missing piece. His face was round and pockmarked with acne scars, discolored by broken blood vessels, telling him this man was a career alcoholic, one so deep in addiction that he probably needed to down a keg or two to feel anything. His front teeth were also gone, but he probably didn’t miss them.

“You t-boned my car.”

He looked, his glazed eyes needing a couple of minutes to actually focus. “Really? I don’t remember that at all.”

Roan felt dizzy for a minute, but it passed. He walked over to the Cadillac and peered in. The windshield was cracked, but otherwise wasn’t much worse for wear. Keys still dangled in the ignition. “What’s wrong with the car?”

He made a negative noise, sort of shrugged, but it may have been a full body tremor. “Wouldn’t go.”

Did it actually suffer some damage, or was it just stalled or flooded? Only one way to find out. He got in the car, ignoring the overwhelming smell of malt liquor, old puke, and even older fast food wrappers and body odor that seemed to permeate the vehicle (he wouldn’t be surprised if roaches lived under the front seat), and tried to start the car. The engine coughed and died, but he tried again, gently giving it gas. This time the engine sputtered, and didn’t exactly roar, but at least cleared its throat and kept going. The man finally noticed, and said, “Hey, that’s my car!”

“I’m making a beer run. Want anything?”

As he thought, that stopped him. He’d been trying to stand up, but he plopped back down happily, and said, “Hey yeah, pick me up a coupla forties, okay?”

“Gotcha.” The Honda had dead plates, so there was no way it could be traced back to Javier. He’d just have to pay him for the lost parts.

He drove off, hoping he hadn’t lost too much time on Holden and the snuff guys. And if he had, well, if god existed, it better help them, because nothing else could.

*****

Now

Roan ran down towards the sprawling house in the depression of downwinder land, the desert just down from the old nuclear reservation, where the snuff guys had brought Holden for a final performance. He just hoped he wasn’t too late, although he doubted he was. Holden was a survivor, after all, and if anyone could stay alive, it was him.

He had to fight the urge to collapse to all fours, as he felt he could run faster that way. The lion was creeping through him, revealing itself in pain that distorted his bones and twisted his muscles, and as his thinking began to slip sideways, words harder and harder to conceive of, it came out more. The lion thought in concrete terms: blood, rage, hunger. It would be so easy to give in to that, and just about what they deserved.

He parsed the scents, tried to determine how many people were here now, but they were overlaid with so many older scents it was difficult to tell. But he was dealing with at least a dozen; he could smell Holden’s scent here too, leading towards the nondescript ranch style house. He had just about reached the door when it opened, and a man started coming out. “ – her I’ll call her back later, I’m outta smokes.” He turned and saw Roan, but he had only a second, hardly long enough for recognition, before Roan barreled into him and sent him flying back into the house.

This wasn’t smart. He had no idea how many people he was dealing with, how well armed they were, but he was furious, the animal taking over and making him lose control. He was aware only that there were other people in the room, four men, most smoking, some on drugs (amphetamines, prescription, pot, booze), two sprawled on a couch, one standing, the one he just knocked to the floor. The standing one pulled a gun – there was speech sounds, noises, but they made no sense to him – and Roan lunged at him, roaring, there was an explosion, a burst of hot cordite he could taste/smell like peppery metal, but he didn’t know if it hit him or not. There was pain, but there was always pain, and it was impossible to tell one pain from another. Pain was a light and he was the sun, radiating pain, gifting the world with his aura of pain as his body broke and traded one form for another.

He grabbed the man, pinned him against the wall, sunk his teeth into his neck before he realized what he was doing. He pulled himself away as the man screamed, and threw him down, blood in Roan’s mouth and blood pouring from his neck where Roan had torn the flesh. Someone grabbed him from behind, but he flailed, his elbow smashing into his skull hard enough to make the man collapse as if shot. The other two men ran, one outside, the other deeper into the house, screaming something, making urgent speech sounds that Roan was no longer Human enough to interpret. But he recognized fear, the taste sweetly savory, and followed that little breadcrumb trail promising scared prey, all the more tender for their fear. Another man appeared at the end of the corridor, and he had a bigger gun, but Roan jumped the millisecond before he fired, and he heard bullets buzz through the air like angry hornets as Roan landed on the man, driving him to the floor, hitting hard enough to break something (Roan heard the bone snap, not his, this was a musical, beautiful sound of distance), and as he roared down into the man’s face the man screamed, a pathetic noise of pain and terror, facing something he couldn’t understand. His fear smelled like rain, like fresh meat, like warm blood.

He caught a scent deeper in the house, a smell he knew, more fear, more pain, and the faint but distinct scent of death. Roan crawled over the man and headed down the hall, farther in, following the siren’s call of death. He wanted to sink his teeth into that. He wanted to take a bite out of all of it.

This was his house, his place, his territory. And they were all his prey.