4 – Eyes Spliced Open

Roan wondered if he fell asleep before Holden did.

Holden had just gone back to his bedroom when Roan stared up at his ceiling and yawned, wondering if the upstairs neighbor really was rollerblading (that’s what it sounded like), and it seemed like no time at all passed when he suddenly woke up in the chair where he had dozed off. Holy shit – he’d taken too many pills. He checked his watch, and was relieved to see he’d only lost an hour.

He ventured into Holden’s bedroom, to make sure he was asleep. He was, laying on his side (good – it wasn’t likely he’d vomit in his sleep, but still it was a good idea), half his blanket pooling on the floor. Roan picked it up and draped it over his torso, and on some mad impulse, briefly stroked his driftwood colored hair. It was soft, although there was a bit of brittleness from hair product. He felt a brief flare of warmth for him and wasn’t sure why, except he was his “sidekick”, and possibly just as fucked up as he was, but in a totally different way.

Oh, what was he thinking? No one was as fucked up as he was.

He left Holden’s apartment, locking the door behind him, and realized he felt funny as he walked back to his car. Why? It took him a bit to figure it out, but he was sober, sober and hungry, and he had these weird aches in his shoulders and hip joints. Not pain, not … exactly. It was just an odd feeling, one he couldn’t quite pin down or describe. He didn’t feel quite right in his own body anymore, did he?

See? This is why it never paid to be sober. You noticed things that bugged the shit out of you.

He stopped at a fast food place and just ordered random crap off the menu, figuring it all tasted pretty much the same: like fryer fat and salt. He was generally correct.

Once he got home he expected to be greeted by Dylan, but instead he found a note. It seemed that Silver, that upscale place, had to sack their bartender and needed to hire someone right now for the evening shift. Dyl had to drop everything and get over there for a speedy orientation before he worked his first shift tonight. The place was only open until midnight, so he’d be home a bit earlier than his usual Panic shifts, which sometimes put him home around four in the morning, an ungodly hour only decent for drug addicts and detectives.

Even though he knew he might not dress well enough or earn enough to get in the door, he had to try and see Dylan tonight. It would be a supportive gesture to show up – well, as long as he didn’t cause a scene or start a fight. He’d work hard not to do that.

At least Dylan would probably be too tired to bring up the fact that they hadn’t slept together since he returned from Willow Creek. Roan was trying hard to keep his libido tamped down with the meds, and generally it worked; most days he was too tired to stay up and watch television, nevertheless do anything else.

But it would come up sooner or later, he knew Dylan was already thinking of ways to ask him about it, and why did he even need to ask? The last time they had sex, he bit him.

Not the usual way, which could be dismissed as a “love bite”, much like the growling could be dismissed as an odd quirk. He bit Dylan’s throat, hard enough to make him jerk his head away reflexively, hard enough to actually draw blood. The worst part? Roan hadn’t been aware he’d done it until Dylan’s reaction.

It was Dylan who made the excuses for him. He said it was hardly a scrape (bullshit – one of his canine teeth punctured his skin), that he got carried away and it was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. The lion was screwing up rage and lust, and he was starting to lose control in even the quiet moments. He didn’t want to risk intimacy again until he was sure he wasn’t going to accidentally kill him … but he couldn’t be sure, could he? There was no way to be sure.

And his blood? Oh god, it tasted so good. He was starting to dream about the taste of his blood. He was a fucking monster.

He dozed on the couch until the phone woke him up. It was dark in the house and kind of cold, and he didn’t care. Answering the phone was pure reflex – as soon as he did it and was half-awake, he wanted to slam it down again. But it was too late. “Roan, how fast do you think you can get to Club Damage?” It was Seb asking, typical for him he skipped the  foreplay.

“Club Damage?” Roan asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He’d been dreaming of the taste of Dylan’s skin, salty and warm, followed by the ecstasy of his coppery hot blood. What was he now, a vampire? Being a cat wasn’t bad enough? “Oh god, is that that meat market that opened up where the Neon Lounge used to be?”

“One and the same. Funny you use the term meat market – a cat, seems like a leopard, got loose in the club somehow. We have ten injured, three by the rush out the door, two seriously mauled by the cat, which has been trapped in the men’s bathroom. The bathroom has a grate over the window, so the cat can’t get out, but the sharpshooters can’t take a shot either, and considering how enraged this cat is going through the door seems vaguely suicidal. You feeling lucky?”

“Not really.” He sat up, then asked, “How’d it get in the club?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. You’d think the Lady Gaga disco remix that assaulted us once we came in the doors would have scared the bejesus out of any cat, but maybe it’s deaf.”

“So nobody knows?”

“So far, I’m lucky to get a coherent phrase out of anyone. Apparently there was a bachelorette party on tonight, and these girls have been enjoying many two dollar margaritas, and the guys are hardly any better. The bartender did tell me that the door wasn’t open, and no one let it in as far as she could tell. But why would someone let a leopard in?”

“And how? Why wouldn’t the cat attack whoever was holding the door? That doesn’t make sense, Seb.”

“I agree. What’s your  theory?”

Good question. Of course he didn’t have one. Nothing made sense; he’d have to see the place to formulate any kind of theory. “Elves.”

“Can you prove it in court? I’ll accept it if you can prove it in court.”

“Elves explode into dust if you don’t believe in them.”

“Shit. Well, I’ll cross that off the list. See you in twenty?”

“I’ll try and make it fifteen,” he said, and hung up. It was only then that Roan realized that there was a message waiting on the machine. He checked it to find it was Dee. “I’m off at midnight. Drop by or I’ll kick your ass.” That was it, the entire message. Great. He was going to get his ass kicked either way, wasn’t he? Well, why not? His life was currently a series of various ass kickings.

He changed clothes, wolfed down a croissant, and popped a couple of pills before grabbing his leather jacket and helmet. He hadn’t taken out the bike for a while, and he felt like it could use a little road time.

It also helped him make illegal cuts, so he got to Club Damage in about fifteen minutes. You’d think with a name like Club Damage it’d be a punk club or something, but sadly no, it was a trendoid place where you drank overpriced drinks and hoped to hook up with someone who wouldn’t give you chlamydia. The Neon Lounge, which used to be here, was actually an odd little jazz club that occasionally hosted avant garde musicians and other oddities, raking in just enough to keep it afloat, but as soon as the owner died from hepatitis, the place was bought up and transformed into a place that promised foam parties and two for one well drinks. It was like a piece of the city had died as well.

Police cars and ambulances blocked off the street, with news vans forced to the periphery. One of the news anchors recognized him, and after waving like a lunatic, bellowed, “So it is a cat incident, huh?”

Roan’s only response was a middle finger, which got laughs from the paramedics who were paying attention. He ducked under hastily rolled out crime scene tape and was intercepted by Seb while getting evil glares from Garcia and the rest of the cat squad goons, standing by with their body armor and sniper rifles, looking like fascist toy boys. Roan shot Garcia a smile, and a slightly smarmy, “Ladies.”

Seb snickered, and said, “You just wanna start something, don’t you?”

“If he’s gonna eye fuck me, he’s gonna pay for it. So what’s the deal? If I’m goin’ in, I don’t need back up.”

“Normally, yeah, but there’s something wrong with that cat.”

“What, does it have rabies?”

“You joke, but that might be it. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He followed him into the club, which smelled of blood, fear, and tequila, with a bit of that foam they would spray on the dance floor for the foam parties. (In fact, there was still a bit on the edge of the dance floor.) They were hardly half way towards the back when Roan heard the snarling, followed by dull thuds. “What the hell’s that?”

“According to the guy looking in the window? The leopard throwing itself into the doors.”

“Doors? Not just the door out?”

He shook his head. “Stall doors, stall walls. It jumped up on the sinks and tried to climb the mirror. It attempted to jump on a hand dryer and brought it down. It’s acting like it’s all hepped up on goofballs, and no one’s sure why.”

“Just like no one’s sure how it got in here?”

“Yeah. Think there’s a connection?”

Roan looked around. The fire door could only open from the inside, and the club’s front entrance was actually two doors, since it hadn’t modified the Neon Lounge’s old holdover of having a lobby (the building was once a bank, and the owner of Neon thought it was kind of funny to keep the entrance the same). “Hell if I know, Seb. But two coincidences in a row? No fucking way.”

He nodded tersely. “Kinda what I thought too. But do me a favor and find me a clue I can use, okay?” He handed him a radio and a tranquilizer gun, and while Roan took them both, he couldn’t help but ask, “If it’s hepped up and rabid, is a tranq gonna do anything?”

“That’s a triple dose of the usual, what we’d use to try and put you down.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Take it as a compliment. You’re stronger than the average bear and we all know it.” After a moment, he added, “You strapped? That leopard might be stronger than you.”

“No leopard is stronger than me,” he snarled, with more anger and pride than he intended. Maybe it was the whole thing with Bolt, or maybe he was still stung by the idea that he was leaving humanity far behind him. Either way, he deserved the odd look Seb gave him, but he didn’t acknowledge it as he turned away and walked towards the two cat squad guys blocking the men’s room door, keeping it shut and standing by with their guns drawn. He didn’t recognize either of them but they seemed to recognize him, as they both nodded and the Latina woman with the butch haircut raised her hand and said, “Wait a moment, sir.” She was listening to her earpiece radio, and after several seconds reported, “It’s in a stall,” and stepped aside, so he could go in. He was going to make a joke about maybe it needed to use the john, but everybody was so damn serious he knew it wouldn’t go over well.

He stepped into the bathroom with its slate tiles and gleaming porcelain fixtures, and barely shut the door behind him before the leopard came charging out of the stall it was in and ran straight for him. There wasn’t a lot of ground to cover, but it was a relatively small leopard, maybe five five in length (not counting the tail), dark brown with lighter spots, and yellowish streaks suggesting whoever it was used peroxide. It wasn’t so much roaring as screaming as it ran for him, foam and saliva dripping from its gaping maw. Roan roared an angry warning, but it wasn’t listening and was already lunging. If it wasn’t rabid, it was crazy.

It jumped for his throat, but he caught it mid air with a punch, hitting it square in the jaw. It went flying across the room, and hit the wall so hard a part of the urinal broke off and fell to the floor along with the leopard, which struggled to get up on its feet. It shook its head hard enough to shake its whole body, and it stumbled every time it tried to stand up. It was growling the whole time, snarling, drool hanging down from its lower jaw. Roan was growling too, but it was reflex. The cat smelled wrong; there was something chemical in its scent, something like ammonia and phosphorus, and it was deeply confusing, almost throwing his lion side off. He felt the muscles boiling beneath his skin, bones crackling like kindling on a fire, the crack of his jaw like gunshots as the joints popped.

A lighter punch had fractured Oliver’s skull, but showing how tough transformed cats were, the leopard finally regained its feet and started towards him, but he vomited out a roar that was loud enough and angry enough to stun it, make it hesitate. Roan hesitated too, mainly because it smelled so wrong he wanted to put it out of its misery. It wasn’t a sick smell, not exactly … it was more like a smell of poison.

As he snarled and growled, approaching the cat slowly, his Human side warred with his cat one. Something was wrong with this cat, and it wasn’t rabies, it wasn’t pneumonia, it wasn’t anything that could be explained by smell.

Smell. That was it; that was the weird thing beyond the ammonia and phosphorus. Perfume. He was smelling perfume, Bijan Wicked to be exact. What the hell ..?

The leopard got up enough strength and courage to lunge again, but he was back in himself enough to kick it, fighting back what he actually wanted to do (which was rip its throat out, put it down like the sick creature it was). He caught it in the torso and sent it flying backwards, where it crashed into the window hard enough to shatter the glass, which rained down on it as it hit the floor. It was still snarling, still struggling to get up, ignoring the “Holy shit!” coming from outside, where the bathroom watcher must have gotten a scare. Roan remembered the tranquilizer gun and pulled it out, putting a round in its neck. It was still struggling to get up, now bleeding from its black pad of a nose and from a dozen different glass cuts, and still drooling thick, viscous ribbons. “Stay down,” he snarled, his voice just barely Human, sounding like a cross between James Earl Jones and a trash compactor full of gravel. It was fighting the drugs all the way, but didn’t have the impetus to stand up.

He heard the door open behind him, smelled the relatively fresher air, and heard Seb say, “I’d ask how you broke a urinal, but I don’t care.”

“There’s something wrong,” he said, not turning around. His voice was still gravelly, but Human enough. His jaw didn’t feel right, though; he wasn’t sure it had completely morphed back.

A female voice snorted, and he assumed it was the Latina cop. “No shit, Sherlock.”

“No, you don’t get it. She’s newly transformed.”

A pause, the snap of gun holsters. It was Seb who replied, and Roan could almost feel the other cops looking at him, tacitly saying ‘He’s your freaky friend – you deal with him’.  “You’re gonna hafta be more explicit with me here, Roan. You saying this was her first transformation?”

“I’m saying she came in this club a Human.”

“How is that possible? I mean, it takes about an hour to transform, right? I mean, for most.” Roan heard the unspoken Not for you, you freaky ass bastard, but for everyone who has even a shred of humanity left. “Someone would’ve noticed.”

“I agree. Someone would have. Maybe the someone who poisoned her.”

“Poisoned? She’s poisoned?”

“Run a full tox screen. Better yet, get Doctor Petra Rosenberg in on this.”

“Who?”

“My doctor, she’s an expert on infecteds, I’ll give you her number.”

There was a scoff, and a male voice – not Seb’s – exclaimed, “How the hell does he know this stuff? I mean, we all know he’s one of them, but -”

“He says something, you can bet on it,’” Seb snapped, more impatient than angry. “And if you don’t believe me, ask the Chief. Got it?”

The boy answered with a cowed, “Yes sir.”

Roan didn’t know if he looked Human enough or not, and really didn’t care. He hurt, he could taste his own sour blood in his mouth, and this rookie just fucking pissed him off. He glared at him, a potato faced boy who was probably on the wrong side of twenty two, and said, “One of them? I am not one of them. She is a Human being who’s probably been murdered by some fuck you barely questioned twenty minutes ago. Don’t forget you’re looking at an illness, not an outcome.”

“Murdered?” Seb repeated. “You don’t think she’s gonna make it?”

Roan shook his head, even though it hurt. There weren’t enough drugs to ever block out this pain, although the ketamine worked surprisingly well. Maybe he should’ve asked Holden if he had more.  “It smells like it’s permeated her system. No wonder she was acting crazy.”

“Um, did you just say you weren’t Human?” the female officer asked, obviously confused.

He wiped the blood from his chin, wishing he’d brought one of the cars after all. He needed more pills just to function; it felt like he was full of broken glass, clogging his bloodstream like crushed ice. “Yes. Now where are the fucking paramedics?”

Maybe it was the pain, or the continued restlessness of the lion in his own head, but he had a bad feeling that this was just the start of something. And there was no fucking way it could be any good.

3 – Camera Shy

If this jackass wasn’t taking the piss – and it really seemed like he wasn’t – then the world had gone from simply insane to bugfuck insane. “You are aware I loathe everything you stand for?”

“I’m aware there’s been a problem in communication,” Bolt replied blandly.

“Are you also aware I’m an atheist?”

“Our Church is open to all of our infected brethren, no matter their belief system. Or lack thereof.”

Roan shook his head. He knew he was incredibly drugged up, so he looked at Fiona, who seemed just as startled as he was, and asked, “Is this actually happening, or am I hallucinating?”

“If you’re hallucinating, so am I,” she replied.

Okay, that settled that. “I’ll give you credit for thinking outside the box, but you’re out of your fucking mind,” he told Bolt.

Bolt shook his head, but Roan could read nothing in his expression. “Am I? You  are respected in the infected community, feared by some, and even some of the normals know who you are. It can be argued you’re one of the most famous infecteds existing today.”

“Famous?”

“On a regional level.”

“Umm, no. But thanks for playing.”

Bolt shook his head. “Are you actually playing dumb?”

“You’re blowing sunshine up my ass and I have no idea why. Flattery doesn’t even work for guys trying to get into my pants.” He was hoping the reminder of his extremely gay lifestyle would make him hesitate, and there was an obvious blanching, but it only threw him off his spiel for a moment.

“I’m not sure it’s flattery. Yelling your name in a crowded police station will get you some dirty looks.”

“Yeah, but that’s probably not related to my infected status.”

“You garner a certain respect few other infecteds can claim.”

“If respect can be interpreted as hostility, I’ll give you that.”

He shook his head again, impatience finally showing. “You’re not going to take this seriously, are you?”

“Look, I give you lots of credit for balls, but there’s just no way in hell I’m joining your Church.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Are you seriously asking that? Where do I start? How about your predilection for suckering in Goth kids and other awkward teens and getting them infected?”

He spread his hands out as if offering something. “If you don’t like something, change it. We understand this is a two way street.”

Actually, that was a tempting offer, and he may have even taken him up on it if he thought he was at all serious. “What if I told you the only thing that would make me happy would be me killing the whole lot of you and burning your Church to cinders?”

He looked utterly bewildered and slightly scared. Fiona cut the tension by interjecting, “Excellent Simpsons reference.”

“Thank you. At least someone knows the classics.” He threw up his hand dismissively and said, “You made your offer. Please go now.”

“I didn’t expect an answer right away. Please think about it, don’t dismiss it out of hand,” Bolt said, almost pleading. “Call me when you’ve made up your mind.”

“I’ve made it up now,” Roan pointed out, but Bolt and Lurch were already on their way out the door.

As soon as they were gone, he asked Fiona, “Would it have made any difference if I said it in a Groundskeeper Willie accent?”

“Probably not. It was totally over their heads.” She paused briefly, clearly thinking something over. “You know, maybe you should do it.”

He stared at her. “Pardon?”

“Come on! There’s no better way to destroy a system than from the inside.”

“So you think I should join them just to bring them down?”

“There’s no better reason. Eli would die a second time if he knew you were heading up his church. It sounds like fun.”

Wow. Vengeance, they name was dominatrix.

“What, I just join something I know nothing about to run it straight into the ground?’

“Why not? George Bush did it, why can’t you?”

That was an excellent point.

He told Fiona he was closing down early for the day since he’d already had his quotient of crazy, which was fine with her since she had a lunch date with Tank anyways (wow, they’d been together almost three weeks – that seemed semi-serious), and while she invited him along, he declined. As it was, he called Dylan to see if he could meet him for lunch. They arranged to meet at Pho Pacific, a Vietnamese restaurant that was both good and had a decent selection of vegetarian food, that was also almost perfectly situated between his office and where Dylan was currently job hunting.

Lunch was good, they talked about everything but his new physical reality as some kind of freakazoid Human/lion creature. Dylan was astonished at Bolt’s offer, but being Buddhist, didn’t think joining just to destroy them would be a good idea. (He’d make a shitty dominatrix.)

After lunch, Dylan went off to a bar that was hiring, and Roan was going to go home and sleep, except it was then the cops called and asked him to come in and make an official statement. He hoped they weren’t going to quietly arrest him, but it might have been a mercy.

It turned out to be an hour and a half of sheer boredom, as he repeated his story three different times, and it didn’t change one iota from the night of the incident. As the poor son of a bitch cop took his statement (so new he pretty much squeaked), he found himself wondering if anything Bolt said was true. Did they actually respect him? They didn’t much when he was a cop. But that was before they knew he had super powers. Perhaps respect varied depending on how much you could do for – and to – a person. In fact, that made perfect sense.

He was able to discover that it looked like Oliver was going to live, and pressing charges would be unlikely, because Nadia’s official statement backed up his (what a shock) and it appeared to be self-defense, and Oliver was violating a restraining order anyways. As for the skull fracture, it seemed to be written off as a “freak accident”. Roan wanted to say “Emphasis on freak,” but kept it to himself.

He found himself sitting in his car, staring out the windshield at nothing, wondering why he felt numb and empty. Oh, right, he was full of Vicodin. That could do that to a person. Or whatever he was.

He supposed he should give up the pills before he got really addicted, but he was afraid the pills were the only thing helping keep his lion at bay. He was terrified if he completely sobered up, he’d be a full lion in a week. Maybe it wasn’t true, but did he know that for sure? He knew nothing. He didn’t even know what was happening to him anymore.

He stared at his eyes in the rearview mirror, trying to see if his eyes had changed, but he could no longer tell.

He had the keys in the ignition when his cell rang, and he almost didn’t answer it, but figured what the fuck. It turned out to be Holden. “You busy right now?”

“Not at the moment. Why?”

“I could use a lift. Can you pick me up? I’m at a bar, Cooper’s, down the street from the Red Lion.”

Roan puzzled over this for a moment, before he realized that Holden’s voice sounded funny. Kind of congested. “Is everything all right?”

“No. Client got violent on me, I had to beat the shit out of him – look, I don’t wanna discuss it on the phone. Can you give me a ride? I don’t wanna deal with a cabbie right now.”

“What do you mean a client got violent on you?” He then shook his head, and asked, “Are you all right?”

“A little bruised, but I’ve had worse.”

That wasn’t reassuring, as being a street kid and a prostitute pretty much guaranteed you had gotten the shit beaten out of you at some point. “Were you -”

“I really don’t wanna talk about this right now,” he interrupted. “I just wanna get home.”

“Yeah, okay,” he sighed. Holden sounded oddly fragile, like he was one good push away from either crying or screaming in rage. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be here,” Holden replied, and hung up.

Considering he was now considered a “high class prostitute”, he was less likely to be treated badly by his clients, but it didn’t make him perfectly safe. Even people who paid the big bucks could still be unfathomable dicks, basically paying a thousand dollars to slap a trick around. The weird part of this was Holden was so solid. He was a big guy, not a twink, not someone anorexia thin and waifish; he had a broad shouldered build and still looked a bit like the high school athlete he was before his life took its sudden turn. You’d never look at him and think “easy mark” … unless you knew he was a hooker, and then you might automatically discount him. That’s what happened at the snuff filmmakers’ compound, and look what that got them. Just because you allowed other people to use you didn’t mean that you were a complete pushover doormat. Roan just hoped he hadn’t killed the client.

Cooper’s was a bar like any other bar – poorly lit, reeking of beer and despair, classic rock playing faintly in a background slightly overwhelmed by Sportscenter coming from a small TV over the bar, which almost no one was paying attention to. Holden was sitting slumped at the end of the bar nearest the door, working on what Roan guessed was a gin and tonic (Holden liked gin – it seemed to be the only alcohol he really liked). He sat on the empty stool beside him and asked, “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” He swigged down the rest of his drink, and Roan saw some of the damage done.

“Holy shit.” He turned Holden’s face towards him. He had a bloodied lower lip, with a slight tear in the corner of his mouth, and his left eye was bruised and starting to blacken. It wasn’t bad right now, but in a few hours it’d be a good sized shiner.

Holden twisted his head away, and said, “Don’t worry about it. Guy surprised me, got a couple of good licks in, but then I recovered and got him. If you think I look bad, you should see him.”

“You should report him to police. I’ll come with you.”

He shook his head as he swiveled off his stool. “No need.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I did worse to him, and I let him know if he went to the cops about me, I’d destroy him. I meant it.” Holden headed out, shoulders hunched, hands dug in the pockets of his leather jacket. He was in his jeans/white t-shirt outfit that might as well have been the male hustler uniform. Roan followed, but waited to speak until they were in the car.

“Politician or preacher?”

“Circuit court judge.”

Roan hadn’t expected that. “Really?”

“You haven’t heard the best bit. He was in town to speak at a prayer breakfast this morning, and he was probably drunk by the afternoon. He’s a fucking mean drunk.”

He shook his head as he started the car. “Super conservative? Married?”

“Oh yeah. The perfectly average wife and two point five kids, and a record of decisions that makes the Christian Right oh so very happy. Unbeknownst to them, he has a thing for cock and a raging form of alcoholism that makes him an insufferable bastard. If you told me he beat his oh so perfect wife and kids, I wouldn’t be surprised.” After a brief pause, Holden added, “I have pictures.”

“What?”

“It’s my insurance when I get hired by a guy who is powerful enough to have me railroaded if he gets caught or things otherwise go south. I take pictures of them. If we end our relationship without fuss, the pictures are destroyed and they know nothing about them. If things go wrong, they’re my ace in the hole. I won’t go down alone. They think they can bury me, they’re fucking going with me. And he has lots to lose – not just the wife and kids and support of Pat Robertson, but his entire career. Hiring a prostitute is against the law, you know. The law he’s supposed to be enforcing.” Holden was looking out the passenger window, a muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching, like he was chewing something hard and unpleasant.

“How many power people do you have on your client list?” Mostly he was just curious.

He glanced down at his hand, and his fingers twitched like he was silently counting. Holy shit, he was. “Four at the moment, counting him. But he’s now an ex-client – nobody fucking hits me.”

“There’s a politician and a preacher, right?” Holden simply nodded. “So who’s the third?”

Holden was so silent for so long, Roan assumed he wasn’t going to tell him. But finally he said, “Army brass.”

Considering the sheer amount of military bases in the state, he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Brass, as in ..?”

“Near the top, decorated, a shitload of guys under his command, career almost as old as I am.”

“Shit.”

“He’s my oldest client, age wise, but he’s in better shape than most of ‘em. And he’s good with discretion, but then he’d have to be.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“Yep.”

“He married?”

“Divorced. That way he can say he’s dedicated his life to his job ’cause he never got over his wife leaving him. Although she left because he stopped having sex with her, but hey, why spoil a good story with details?”

“You are aware how risky this is, don’t you? If they catch you taking pictures -”

“They haven’t and they won’t. Give me some credit, I’m not an idiot.”

“I know, but you’ve been hurt enough.”

“Well, if I didn’t wanna get hurt, I shoulda never become a hooker,” he said in an off hand, derisory manner. There was almost always truth in the awful, but it seemed cruel to say that about himself. But Holden seemed to be in a very black mood right now, so he didn’t say it out loud.

Once they got back to Holden’s place, Roan went to see if he had any ice packs in his freezer while Holden went off to his bathroom. Maybe to retrieve painkillers, maybe to punch a hole in the wall, he didn’t know and decided not to ask, giving him that much respect and privacy.

He found an ice pack in an otherwise almost empty freezer (he had a couple of dinners, that was it), and found a bottle of aspirin in the cupboard when Holden came back out, stripped to his black boxer briefs. Somehow he looked slightly more intimidating half naked than dressed, although he had no idea how that worked. Holden had a reddish mark on his knee that might ripen to a bruise – either he’d taken a kick to the shins, or kneed the judge in a place where he hit bone pretty hard. Holden sat on the couch, as always unashamed, and asked, “Know any retired hookers?”

He brought him the ice pack, which he took with a slight nod of thanks, but he declined the aspirin with a wave of his hand. Roan put it back on the counter. “Can’t say I do.”

“That’s because we don’t retire. We get dead or we drift away, but little good ever comes of us.”

“So be the first.”

That seemed to surprise him. “What?”

“You’ve been many firsts, Holden. This will be just one more for you.” Holden remained one of the strangest men he’d ever met, mainly because he could never quite get a bead on him. Other people he could figure out, know what their reaction would be in certain situations, but Holden? By nature an unpredictable creature, and he probably liked it that way. All he really knew about him was, if things went tits up, you wanted him on your side. If there was a zombie apocalypse, you definitely wanted Holden on your mall occupying crew. If there was a way to survive, he would find it.

Roan slumped in a chair parallel to Holden’s sofa, as Holden held the ice pack to his bruised eye, and he asked, “Why do you make it sound so easy? I’m a drop out, I’ve done porn, all my skills seem to be illegal in nature. It’s not like I can hand over a CV with S&M Boys on it and be taken seriously by anyone.”

“S&M Boys?”

“I’m not Fiona, but I’ll do light dom. It’s on my webpage.”

“Fiona’s harder than you?”

“Much. I’m really very vanilla at heart. I’ll only get a little weird before it starts getting too silly for me to take seriously. Fiona has a better poker face than I do.” He paused a moment. “There’s probably a better way to put that.”

“Probably.” It actually took Roan a moment to find the slightest entendre about that.

“Maybe I should take Paul up on his offer.”

“Paul?”

“A guy who’s a semi-regular. He’s told me he’s willing to pay me to be an exclusive.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’d be his houseboy. He’d pay me to live with him and be his boy toy. He’s rich too, has a nice place on Orcas Island. There’s little downside to it.”

He stared at him in disbelief. “Except you’d be property.”

“What am I now? Little better. Besides, isn’t that what relationships are? You’re someone’s property. It’s just that in this case, the rules are firmly established going in.”

“No, that’s not what relationships are supposed to be. Honestly Holden, the idea is kind of pathetic. This guy can’t date without money being involved?”

“No. All he got was gold diggers after his money. He figured if he paid me and worked out a payment schedule in advance, it would be the most honest relationship he’s ever had. And to be honest, to get those good looking boys, he’d have to have money. He’s not ugly, but he’s plain, and about forty pounds overweight, with the muscle tone of a blanket. At least he’s aware of his limitations.”

Roan just glared at him. He was at least half serious, and that was a half too much. “You can do better. You don’t have to keep selling yourself.”

“Maybe not, but it’d be easier.”

“Since when do you take the easy way?”

That made him smile, but it was bittersweet, sad and almost mocking. “Haven’t you been paying attention, Roan? The easy way is the only way I take.” He put the ice pack down on his coffee table and sat forward, shoulders rounded with exhaustion. “I had some Tylenol Three left over from my last dentist visit, and now I’m thinking I shouldn’t have combined them with gin.”

“How many did you take?”

“Two.”

“How much gin?”

“Also two, at the bar.”

Roan shook his head. “You should be fine. You’ll sleep like a log for about ten hours, but you’ll be fine.”

He nodded. “Sleep sounds good.” He stood up, but hesitated. “Umm … I don’t mean this in any other way, okay? I just mean what I ask.”

“Okay,” Roan agreed hesitantly. Did anything good ever get prefaced that way?

He seemed unnaturally embarrassed, rubbing his own arms as if suddenly cold, looking in his direction but not at him. “Would you, um, would you stay with me? I mean, just until I fall asleep. I don’t really feel like being alone right now, but when I’m unconscious I won’t care.”

So here was where Holden’s shame laid – in Human weakness. Anything that made him seem less like the self-sufficient hard ass he liked to present himself as (and oh, didn’t that sound familiar). He nodded, and said, “Sure.” To make the mood slightly less awkward, he added, “I’ve always wanted to look through your CD collection.”

Holden rolled his eyes. “CD’s? Shit, you should go to bed old man. Who has CDs anymore?”

“Don’t you mock your elders. I’ll club you with my walker.”

“Yeah yeah, don’t break a hip.” He went back towards his bedroom, but he stopped at the doorway and gave him a look that was surprisingly kind and almost grateful. “Thanks.” There was something in his look that suggested he wouldn’t have minded if Roan joined him, but he pretended not to see it.

“It’s not a problem.” And it wasn’t. He owed Holden a lot, but it wasn’t something they talked about. It was an almost impossible conversation to start: Thank you for not killing me when I was a lion, thanks for not freaking out, thanks for making sure I didn’t kill you too. Besides, there was almost no good place that could go.

Roan sat in the relative quiet of Holden’s still surprisingly neat living room, and wondered for the millionth time how his life got so fucked up, and where you went to request a do over.

2 – Born On A Day The Sun Didn’t Rise

Roan was prepared to be arrested. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t happen.

He didn’t know either of the cops that arrived, but they seemed to know who he was, and as he told them what happened, Nadia came out and verified his story, agreeing that Roan only hit him with his fist, and he’d only punched him after Mike tried to hit him with the crowbar. This was a lie, as Nadia wasn’t out in time to see it, but they believed her, and he wasn’t about to point out his client was lying.

When the EMTs arrived, he recognized the female one as Nicole Corbett, one of Dee’s friends. As such, she gave him an out. When he said he punched him and fractured his skull, she shook her head and said, “Unless he has brittle bone disease, I doubt it. It was probably the way he hit the ground.”

Her partner bought it, as did the cops, but he wondered if that would last. He hoped so, but he wouldn’t count on it. Especially once the x-rays were taken.

They stabilized Mike and got him out in the ambulance, and the cops told him the usual: don’t leave the state, we’ll call with any further questions, yada yada yada. So he got a pass. He fractured some poor bastard’s skull, and he got a pass. Okay, yeah, he was clearly the king of the douchebags, but it still didn’t seem right.

Roan collected his things from the trailer and went home, feeling numb to his core. Could he do this anymore? What else could he do?

He couldn’t be around Humans anymore. What was he supposed to do?

He was kind of hoping Dylan would be asleep when he got home, but he wasn’t. He was sitting on the couch working on his sketchpad, and when Roan came in the door, he started to ask him how things went, but stopped when he looked at his face. “Oh god, what went wrong?”

He felt so tired, so terrible and almost feverish, that he had no will to even lie. He told him what happened, and he admitted that he was getting less Human as time went on, that he was becoming unrecognizable even to himself. His hand was hurting but he ignored it – the Vicodin probably helped there – but it was starting to swell and Dylan saw that. He got him an ice pack and wanted to take him to the emergency room, but Roan informed him he never needed to see a doctor for a broken bone – he could just force a change, and his bones would heal right up. That’s what they did when he transformed: they broke themselves and then reset in another configuration. He was the Amazing Bone Snapping Man, and he could do it at will. He even had extra tendons. Rosenberg had told him that last bit; the scans revealed tendons that had never been seen in a Human body before, and no one was sure what to make of them. Even she wasn’t sure what their function was, except perhaps they were the “back up” – when he transformed, his tendons and muscles tore too, and healed, but the spare tendons simply stretched and didn’t tear, so they were ready to go when he transformed from Human to lion, no healing time necessary. More of his body’s adaptation to the new regime.

Dylan held him and kissed him, and that’s when he noticed. “Are you running a fever?”

“My body temperature goes up with a change. That and my blood pressure.”

“But you didn’t change.”

“I did, but I didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Tell me about it.”He felt tired and a bit dizzy, so Dylan led him upstairs and tucked him into bed, and whispered words of comfort to him that he appreciated without actually listening to what was being said to him. Roan didn’t actually care what he was saying anyways, it didn’t matter.

Things weren’t all right, and they wouldn’t ever be all right.

****

Dylan held Roan until he was sure he had fallen asleep, wondering if now that he’d admitted the truth he’d sleep any better.

Ever since coming back from Willow Creek, Roan had slept really poorly, although he probably didn’t know he knew that. He probably thought he was being crafty, sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to read or work on the heavy bag in his office. Sometimes Dylan heard him, or just woke up to find himself alone, although a quick check would confirm that Roan was downstairs.

Some people worried that their partner or spouse was cheating on them. Him, he worried his was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

He quietly crept out of the bedroom, heading back downstairs to retrieve his sketchpad. He’d been making some sketches for Jade, Roan’s infected tattoo artist friend, as she was willing to pay him for his designs, and he figured why the hell not. Art was art, whether it was on a wall or on your arm.

He checked the time, and figured it wasn’t necessarily too late, so he called Dee. Although he sounded slightly rushed when he answered his cell, he didn’t tell him he was busy. He asked if he knew what happened with Roan tonight, but it was a stupid question, because of course he did.

Dee confirmed that the x-rays seemed to indicate a blow to the side of the head was responsible for the guys’ skull fracture, it wasn’t impact with the ground. But since few people could punch that hard, there seemed to be a general consensus of freak accident that Dee was doing his best to encourage. The one bright spot here was the guy was probably going to live.

“How’s he doing?” Dee asked, referring to Roan.

“Honestly? Horribly. He’s pretending he’s not falling apart, but he’s unraveling, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You know, I don’t get that. If someone told me I was better than Human, I’d get me a nifty spandex outfit and a publicist.”

Dylan sighed irritably. Dee was just trying to be funny, but there was a kernel of truth in there as well. “He’s been different all his life. He wants to be less different, not more, but every time he turns around he’s getting more different. I think he feels he’s getting farther and farther away from the Human, and yes, while that sounds like a marvelous idea, it isn’t to Roan. The thought of it is killing him.”

Dee sighed. “Oh, the big drama queen.”

“You know, I appreciate you trying to be funny, but not right now. He’s barely hanging on. You should have seen his face when he came home tonight.”

“What, he looked like he killed someone?”

“Worse. He looked like he had given up. And the way he talked -” he sniffed and rubbed his eyes, unaware he was tearing up until he could feel the drops running from his eyelids. “Fuck. I want to help him, but I don’t know how.”

“Give him pills.”

“Would you stop? I’m serious.”

“Me too.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“Stop. Okay, look, he won’t talk to a therapist, will he?”

“No. He’ll barely talk to me. Why I don’t know. No, I do, but I’m pretending I don’t.” Because he freaked out and almost left him after seeing him partially transformed. But it wasn’t that, not really; he knew from the beginning that Roan wasn’t your average person. It was just the idea that he wasn’t telling him anything, that he was keeping him out of his life completely. At first he thought it was because he really didn’t love him – he didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t love him. Eventually he decided the problem was Roan himself: he was scared of what he was becoming, of what was happening to him, and decided the best way to handle it was to completely deny it. It wasn’t an ideal way of handling anything, but he had this sinking feeling Roan was tired of being who he was. He wasn’t stupid enough to commit suicide … maybe. He no longer knew. He just knew Roan was tired of being a “freak” (Roan’s term), and there was no fixing that.

Dee sighed. “Then you know what you have to do.”

He did, and he didn’t like it. “Talk to Doctor Rosenberg.”

“She gets through to him where others fail. He won’t like it, but what does he like nowadays? Call her.”

“He’ll hate me.”

“He won’t. He might be angry, but not for long.”

He knew he was right, but it felt like a kind of betrayal to go behind his back and talk to his doctor. Still, she was a formidable person, and Roan was at his best when he faced off with someone equal or stronger than him. She would kick his ass, and he probably needed it.

But it was too late to call tonight. After getting off the phone, he wandered back upstairs and watched Roan sleep for a few minutes, wondering if that twitch in his hand meant anything, if it was at all related to the movement behind his eyelids.

Lately, Roan had taken to occasionally growling in his sleep, a deep, throaty rumble that scared him awake the first time he heard it. Dylan suddenly thought maybe an angry wolf somehow found a way to their bedroom, although why he thought that first he had no idea. A sleeping mind was a strange thing.

And a sleeping lion’s mind was probably stranger than most.

****

A sudden feeling of impending attack woke Roan up.

It was stupid of course, insane, and he knew it the minute he opened his eyes and sat up. Some lingering dream fear, a nightmare already forgotten.

Who got woken up by feelings? That was just stupid.

It was an early morning, full of drizzle and bird song, and Dylan was sleeping so peacefully Roan didn’t want to wake him up. So he used the downstairs bathroom to shower, shave, and check his pill stash. He briefly wondered what would happen if he took all his Percocets and Vicodins at once – would it kill him? No, how could it? Elephant tranqs didn’t kill him. It wouldn’t be fair to Dylan anyways.

He had a piece of toast, gulped down a couple Vicodin with his morning orange juice, and set out for the office. Since he was so early, he stopped by a doughnut shop and picked up a few to bribe Fiona with as well as give the office a pleasant smell. It smelled kind of dusty and stale since he so rarely opened the office nowadays; he was getting to the point where he was thinking he should close up the office. He didn’t want to sack Fi, though, and he hated to let the space go since he had so many of memories of Paris here. Sometimes, on days like these, he expected to unlock the door and see Paris sitting behind the desk, giving him a smart ass grin, and he was always so disappointed to find him gone.

He put the doughnuts on Fi’s desk and got down to the paperwork he’d been putting off, half expecting Seb to show up with his temporary new partner and ask him about last night. It never happened.

His mind wandered, and he typed out an email to Dylan, in preparation of the day when he transformed into a lion and didn’t turn back. He may have told him about the secondary tendons last night, but he hadn’t told him about how his aorta walls had thickened, not in a heart disease way but a puzzling way, one that Rosenberg deduced was to shore them up, keep them from spontaneously rupturing when his blood pressure skyrocketed during a change. He hadn’t told him about the fact that it looked like he now had cartilage in his jaw, presumably to help the shift, that he had two teeth that had apparently, at some point, grown back (one had been pulled as a child; the other had been knocked out in a fight), and they were a different density than the other teeth in his mouth. (Why was a bit of a puzzler, but Rosenberg figured they were constants, the same in Human and lion form.) He had what initially looked like bone spurs in his hands and wrists, but what she figured were extra bone and cartilage that became his claws in lion form. Almost all his joints were oddly shaped internally now (luckily you couldn’t really see it on the outside), for what she figured was flexibility. The muscle density in his legs and arms had changed, and she assumed that’s what gave him his astounding long jump and occasional super strength. There was more, something about his blood vessels changing shape, something about him requiring more protein and iron, but at that point he was too overwhelmed to pay much attention. He kept seeing his x-rays on the light screen, with their weird, almost ghostly bones buried within the normal bones of his hands. Internally he was transforming – how long until it moved to the outside? How long did he have until he stopped looking like a human being? What would he do then? All he knew was he’d kill himself before he ended up in a fucking zoo, or vivisected in some doctor’s lab. Even Rosenberg looked at him in a strangely avaricious way, like she couldn’t wait to show off his abnormalities to the medical community and make her bones as the greatest Infected researcher of all time. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but he didn’t know what to think or feel anymore.

She said the virus was accelerating; she said it was altering more of his genes, and she couldn’t say why. She said it might be part of its life cycle, it’s just that no infected had lived long enough to experience this kind of acceleration.  “Maybe the end result of the virus is – or is supposed to be – total transformation.”

Now he remembered. He’d dreamed those words this morning; they had woken him up. He noticed his hands were shaking and he saved a draft, stopped typing, and took another Vicodin. Eventually, the shaking stopped. It occurred to him he had no memory of forcing a change to fix the bone in his hand, but it no longer felt broken.

Fi came in, and they both enjoyed a doughnut while he told her about the resolution of the Rubin case. She didn’t think he should feel bad about breaking his skull since he was a wife beating bastard, but he didn’t tell her that wasn’t really what he felt bad about. He was terrified that he could no longer control anything – his own strength, his own musculature, the change. He was losing control in increments. One of these days, he wouldn’t have any control at all.

He was about to tell her he was going to close up shop early today, he was in no mood to work, when the door opened and two infecteds walked in. He could smell them before they were all the way through, one lion, one leopard.

One was average height, a bit pudgy, with a figure like a salt shaker, his overly moussed brown hair helmet the round top. He wore dark slacks with a navy blue sportscoat that didn’t quite match but was probably supposed to, paired with a pale pink button down shirt he left open at the collar like they’d all just time traveled to the ’70’s. Except for his anchorman hair, he was unremarkable, a whey faced schlub who wore an expression like he thought he was pretty damn cool, suggesting a level of self-delusion that was awe inspiring. The man behind him wore a matching black suit like a funeral director, and was nearly an entire foot taller, his body as long and lean as a surfboard, his thinning hair shaved down to a few translucent wisps. He wore black sunglasses and a matching black skinny tie, like an old member of a ska band who refused to change with the times. He was supposed to be muscle, and maybe he was, he could have had wiry, lanky strength, but Roan couldn’t fear a leopard on his worst day. Or any other infected for that matter. Maybe a tiger strain. They smelled more like annoyance than trouble.

Salt shaker man held out his hand and pasted on a creepy smile that didn’t quite reach his incurious brown eyes. “Roan McKichan, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Roan deliberately looked down at his hand like he didn’t know what it was, and then looked at him with the faintest of scowls. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man didn’t let it faze him. He lowered his hand like he’d never offered it, and said, “I’m David Bolt.” He said it like Roan was supposed to know it. He didn’t, but he took a wild guess.

“You the new nacho grande over at the Church?”

He smirked. “That’s an amusing way to put it. I was told you were funny.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Now there’s no need to be hostile -”

“There’s every need. Get the fuck out.”

The muscle took a step towards him, and Roan took a step towards him in return, glaring at the lenses of his sunglasses, which he was tempted to slap off his long horsey face. He would be damned if he’d ever be intimidated in his own office. “You wanna try something, Lurch? Really?”

“Hey, now, I didn’t come to fight,” Bolt claimed, waving his hands ineffectually. What was he trying to do, flag down a cab? “I have a proposition for you, Mr. McKichan.”

“And I got one for you. There’s the door – use it.”

Bolt seemed to be deliberately ignoring him. “I know your history with the Church has been a bad one, but we’d like to make amends.”

“By catching the first bus outta town?”

He almost smirked, but stopped himself when he heard the growl coming from the base of Roan’s throat. He couldn’t stop it, and he didn’t even try. Bolt pressed on, although now nervousness was evident, a smell like kelp going bad. “No. Things have been in disarray since Elijah died, and the tragic shooting only brought home the fact that we must be a united front against the prejudice faced by our people. We need a leader who can unite us, take us into battle against the normals who would kill us all.”

“You starting a jihad?”

“Hardly. We just need you.”

Roan wasn’t sure he heard him correctly over his own growling. “What?”

“We need you to lead us, Roan,” Bolt said, and he was dead serious.

It was a good thing he was completely medicated, otherwise he might have dropped dead from shock.