7 -  The Buzz Kill

Since he had an “emergency key” to Holden’s apartment, he went there and used it, finding the place to be in general order. (Should it bother him that Holden was a better housekeeper than he was? He wasn’t sure …)

Figuring Holden was beyond caring at this point, he used his computer, and found Judge Garver’s address in minutes. (Lloyd Garver, to be precise.) He thought so called “activist judges” needed to protect their addresses, but then he remembered that only applied to judges who made any decision that could be considered left wing. The right leaning activist judges never had to worry about harassment, even if they made a ruling that made Sharia law seem far too lenient. Thanks to Google street view, he was even able to case most of his house. He lived in a McMansion with a high gated fence and wall. You probably needed a special code to get in the gate, but since he  was figuring on jumping the wall, he didn’t need it.

He searched Holden’s bedroom, looking for the photos, but found other interesting things in his dresser drawer and closet. He found enough condoms and lube to keep an orgy going for ten years, and some very questionable leather gear he assumed was for clients. He also found a ski mask, which made no sense, but he took it anyways. He also kept meticulous records of his STD testing (the latest was a clean bill of health that came back two weeks ago), but Roan assumed that was necessary for his employment at the agency, as a whore giving a client a disease would look bad for business.

He suddenly remembered Holden’s favorite hiding place, the one place no one was guaranteed to look: in a South Beach diet sandwich box in the fridge. Because the South Beach diet stuff was shit, and even a desperate junkie wouldn’t eat it.

The box looked pristine, unopened, but as soon as he examined it more closely, he saw one of the ends of the box had been carefully resealed. He opened it with care, pulled out the plastic packing material, and a couple of Zip Lock plastic bags fell out. One held several hundred dollar bills (Holden’s emergency fund, presumably), and the other held a rather thick sheaf of photos. Presumably the negatives were hidden elsewhere, since a fridge probably wasn’t the best place for them, but knowing Holden he had them in a safe deposit box or something. Roan also noticed a Washington State driver’s license under the name Holden Fox, but pretended he didn’t. (It wasn’t like he didn’t have a half dozen fake IDs himself.)

The photos were pretty explicit – there was no way in hell any of the men could say the pictures were “misconstrued”. Having looked up a picture of Lloyd Garver online, he knew what he looked like (well, his face – there was no telling what was under the robe), and eventually found him. The pictures were wonderfully awful for Garver – it showed Holden handcuffed to a bed, while Garver sucked his dick. Holy shit, how did he talk his way out of that? “I handcuffed this hot nude ruffian to the only solid object around, and while phoning the police I tripped and fell mouth first onto his cock.” Roan didn’t put it past a hypocrite like him to actually try the story to see if it would fly.

He decided on an approach with a cold clarity that was pure psychosis. Hot anger was awful, and could be deadly, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the cold rage that made you see the world as only a true predator could. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and how he was going to do it. Did Holden feel this way after he saw Coyote killed?

Muffled music started playing, and when Roan realized what it was, he burst out laughing. It must have been his “regular” (not client) cell phone, and yet the ringtone was the Flight of The Conchords’ “Sugalumps”. Of course he’d have an ode to balls as his ringtone, no matter that it constantly referred to women. A song about balls was something that Holden couldn’t pass up.

The laugh should have broken his homicidal mood, but it didn’t. He fell back to it as he grabbed the ski mask and photos and headed out. Holden didn’t look like he was going to die, but head injuries were funny things – you could bump your head on the door, say you were fine, and drop dead two hours later of bleeding in the brain. Any blow to the head had the potentiality to be fatal, as Mike Oliver could have told anyone.

Garver lived in Bellevue, which kind of figured, and Roan found a place to hide his bike on the previous block, while he rolled the ski mask up like a stocking cap to hide the odd color of his hair. Not that he should have bothered – there was no one walking these exceptionally well tended streets at this time of night. The wealthy had extremely nice neighborhoods, and never used them.

Climbing the wall and jumping over the top of the fence was nothing; scaring off the two German Shepard guard/family dogs was nothing (just a snarl and a growl and they were off), and disabling the lame alarm system they had was also nothing. There were lights on upstairs, probably the kids, and as he crept around the house, avoiding windows lit up or uncovered, he was able to hear a television. He found a darkened window, the curtains slightly parted, and thanks to his rapidly cycling night vision, he was able to see a book lined study. Had to be Lloyd’s, as it just screamed man who wanted to make an impression. Forcing the window open was just like opening an average one, and climbing into a room that smelled of cigar smoke and scotch, filled with thousand dollar furniture, was like getting out of bed. In a bizarre way, he was disappointed. He wanted a challenge, a fight, some sort of difficulty that would make him pause. But it was all too easy, and his rage quietly bubbled and blackened, becoming a weapon of incredible ugliness. His hands felt sweaty in their leather gloves.

He went to the man’s phone, right there on the two thousand dollar desk, and wrote the phone number down on his arm. If he didn’t show up in ten minutes – unlikely – he was going to call the phone. He found more to anger him in the fact that, save for a couple of thick law books, none of the other books had been shifted in some time; someone wasn’t dusting properly. He hated people who only had books for show. They weren’t supposed to be decorations only.

He could hear all the noises in the house. The wife was watching Big Brother, one of the kids was listening to music upstairs (Green Day), there was an occasional creak of the walls shifting and settling. They’d had beef with a burgundy based sauce tonight, mashed potatoes with garlic and sour cream, steamed asparagus. At some point, someone had made Japanese rice pudding. Upscale sure, but oddly normal. The fact that this man was having his fake life, full of lies and contented domesticity, while Holden could have been fighting for his life in a hospital, made him see the dark in shades of translucent red. The lion was right under the skin, for once listening to him, waiting for him to give the signal to tear him to pieces. It was a weird sort of insight, to realize they could work together when violence was a given.

Roan didn’t have to call. He came in, flicking on a light, unaware of the man in the ski mask standing to the right of the door as he picked up a tiny remote no bigger than a mini MP3 player and turning on his Bose stereo system, which played something classical from its deft speakers. He tossed the remote back down when he finally noticed the photo Roan had placed near his computer keyboard, the one of Lloyd sucking off Holden. He did a slight double taken, shoulders stiffening, tension and anxiety starting to come off of him in a smell like acetate when Roan moved, grabbing him by the back of his neck at the same time he slammed a foot down on the side of his knee.

The crack of his leg shattering was quite loud, but not enough to triumph over the orchestra coming from the speakers. Lloyd tried to scream, but just like Roan expected, all that came out was a high pitched squeak like a balloon slowly deflating as he sagged towards the floor. But Roan had a death grip on the back of his neck and held him up, a feat he knew would startle Lloyd. After all, he was holding up a two hundred pound with one hand on the back of his neck – if that wasn’t a feat of strength, what was?

“You shut up and listen to me if you don’t want me to rip your balls off and shove them down your throat,” Roan growled in his ear. “You tell me the names of the men you sent to beat up Fox, and I won’t pulverize every single bone in your body.”

It took him a moment to find his voice, a harsh whisper. “You’re making a mistake, assho -”

Roan let him drop on his broken leg, which would have elicited a scream from him if Roan hadn’t grabbed his chin and forced his mouth to slam shut, causing an audible click of his teeth as well as another noise, a muffled grunt that brought tears to the man’s eyes. Good. Roan was hoping he’d get him to bite his own tongue. With any luck, he’d bitten it off.

In reflex, Lloyd reached up to grab Roan’s wrist – weakly; even if he were a normal man, he could have kicked the shit out of this pudgy, bloated benchwarmer – and Roan idly, with almost no exertion on his part, pulled it off. In the process, he twisted his wrist until his bones crackled like ice underfoot, and the muffled moaning screams coming from him were truly terrible. He let Lloyd go to fall forward and retch on his thousand dollar carpet. “You think it’s hyperbole, Judge? A negotiation? Every minute you don’t tell me what I want to know, I break something. Get it through your thick head: your power means nothing to me. I’m not afraid of you, your authority, the police, no one. Because you are all Human, and I’m not, and there’s nothing you own that I can’t destroy.”

After he finished spitting up bile, he rasped, “You’re insane.”

“Yeah, that too. Just more ammo in my armory.” He stepped on the nape of Lloyd’s neck, driving him face first into the puddle of his own sick. “And don’t think it stops at me breaking you physically. The photo? Tip of the iceberg. Those are stills from a video, you know. Just think if the meal KING or KOMO would make of that footage.”

Lloyd had been struggling, but stopped as soon as he said that. He got his face free enough to mutter, “Video?”

He didn’t know if Holden actually had video of himself and his high powered clients, but all those action photos he saw seemed to indicate they were juicy stills from longer and more involved pieces. Only the most explicit shots would do. “Despite what you may think about whores, Fox isn’t dumb. He knows you guys might try and throw him to the wolves someday, so he had a plan B. Namely, he takes you with him, and let’s face it, he has nothing to lose. You? You have everything. Career, power, prestige, money, family, presumed moral authority  … the lie that you’re hetero. Wanna pick one, Lloyd? Which one will you miss the most?”

The smell of his fear was rank and awful, asparagus piss (and it may have indeed been just that), and Roan ground down his boot heel just enough to exert terrible pressure on the fine bones of his neck. “I’m part of that plan B too. You think you wipe him out and the problem’s gone? No, now you have a bigger problem. But as low as I am, I’m not the worst – Fox has friends in even lower places, ones who probably would have killed you as soon as you walked in the door. You don’t fuck with street kids, Lloyd, certainly not if they’ve managed to claw their way out of the gutter, ’cause that means they’re a lot more ruthless than most, and predators generally hang with predators.”

The hand with the broken wrist was laying as limp as a dead fish on the floor, and remembering Holden from the ER, Roan stamped on it, bones breaking with a cereal like crackle. Lloyd made an odd noise of pain, half scream half sob that was mostly buried in the carpet. “You’re not telling me what I want to know, Lloyd. How ’bout I rip your ear off? I’ll feed it to one of your dogs on the way out. Good luck on getting that reattached.”

“Fuck!” Again, a kind of half sob, but this time mixed with anger and fear. “You stupid crazy shit, they’re cops. You can’t do a thing to them.”

He wished he was surprised, but he wasn’t. It explained the blunt trauma injuries. “Wanna bet? Give me names.”

He hesitated, so Roan dropped down to one knee and gave him a vicious kidney punch that would have him pissing blood for the next two weeks, and snapped his shot ribs just for the trouble. Lloyd made a sort of keening noise, squirming as best he could while trying not to aggravate his many injuries. It was difficult. “Vince Carmody and Oscar Muhlfeld.”

“You’re making those up.”

“No.”

“I know cops, asshat, and I don’t recognize either name.” Okay, there was no way in hell he knew all cops in Washington State, but he was trying to get more information out of the guy. Oftentimes the best way to do that was either by pretending you were an idiot or totally belligerent. Belligerent was very easy for him.

“They’re Staties.”

“State Patrol?” He snickered derisively. “What, couldn’t contact the Three Stooges? Jesus. Not even good people owe you favors, huh?” He had nothing against the state patrol, they were generally fine police officers, it’s just that all groups – be they police, fire, military, even hospitals – had to indulge in childish pissing contests with their “rivals”. Roan reached down, grabbed Lloyd’s arm, and with one twist dislocated his shoulder and his elbow, which sounded with muffled, small pops. He made a noise of pain that was almost breathless, unable  to do much more. “How do you explain these injuries, Lloyd? And the photos? I’ve left more than one around the place. How do you explain that to your wife, to your Focus on the Family friends? I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the video. Send it to the news vultures? Upload it to YouTube and Xtube and see if anyone ever works it out? Might be fun to see how long it takes. You have a favorite, Lloyd?”

“F-fuck you,” he wheezed. It sounded more pathetic than defiant. “You’ll pay for this. You and the whore -”

Roan stamped on his dislocated elbow, crushing bones. “If anything happens to him, I will hunt you down, destroy whatever career you have left, and then take my sweet time killing you. You’re Human, there’s nothing you can do to escape me or protect yourself. Are we clear?”

“You’re insane.”

“The good thing about insanity? You really don’t give a shit what other people think of you. Stay away from Fox, or die for your trouble.” He then stomped his head into the carpet, breaking his nose and severely stunning him, if not knocking him out. Roan pocketed the incriminating photo before leaving by the window he came in – the picture was still ammunition. Lloyd had just needed to know more than one person had them, because otherwise Holden was still a target.

Roan took off, and found an open cyber cafe in downtown Seattle where he found addresses for Vince Carmody and Oscar Muhlfeld. Carmody lived in Queen Anne, not far from here, but Muhlfeld had a place in Burien, much farther away. So Carmody, by necessity of geography, was first.

Since he was able to connect with his usual database, he discovered Carmody was divorced and lived alone in a condo. Fifth floor, fourth door on the right. He may have been a cop (well, trooper), but it was easily to pick his lock and walk right into his condo. For a bachelor, his place was fairly neat, a pizza box with uneaten crusts on the coffee table the only stereotypical item visible in the darkness. Creeping by the kitchenette, he smelled Holden’s blood. Carmody had rinsed his nightstick off in the sink.

This whole time, Roan had felt oddly disconnected from himself, almost feverish, as if everything that was happening was a vivid hallucination he was only half interested in. But the smell of Holden’s blood layered over the scents of Carmody – everything; body odor, stale coffee, beer farts, bad breath, rank cologne, shoe polish, hair gel, toothpaste, all the smells of a modern day Human – brought him back to himself in a very bad way. This was a man who brutalized another, and then, after cleaning his equipment, went to bed. It didn’t bother him at all? Maybe he objected at some point; maybe Lloyd had something on him, maybe he was forced into doing it or lied to about what Holden did to deserve it (surely Lloyd hadn’t told them the truth). But he still did it. And Roan smelled no fear here, no sorrow, nothing that could be construed as regret.

And he could hear him snoring in the next room, the deep sleep of a man at peace with his conscience.

Even though he felt more alive than he had all evening, he blacked out, or maybe the lion had taken over more than it should have. Because one minute he was standing there, looking down at the stainless steel sink where you could smell the blood in the drain and not see it, and the next he was back in the corridor, heading for the elevator. His hands hurt, and the faint scent of a stranger’s blood lingered in his nostrils. Alone in the elevator, he whispered to himself, to the lion within him, “What did you do?”

But he really didn’t want to know, and the lion knew that if it knew anything at all. There was no reply, but Roan hadn’t expected one. The lack of blood on his clothes was the only sign that maybe it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

In a way, he was hoping the drive to Burien would wake him up, snap him out of this black mood, but no such luck. It was cold, and the sky was starting to lighten – had he really been out all night? It felt like only a couple of hours – and he felt like death. Not like he was dying, but like he was actually Death, a thing in a black robe with a scythe and an urge to use it.

When did he lose his mind? He wished he could remember; he wished there was some point when it became clear, a moment when he heard his brain actually snap, like a guitar string pulled too tightly. But would it have really helped? He didn’t think so.

Muhlfeld was married with a kid, and he had no intention of terrorizing his wife and child. But there was an SUV in the driveway with a half naked woman depicted on an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, and he was willing to bet it wasn’t his wife’s car. So he broke into it through the back seat, and found a Sharpie in his coat pocket. He had a vague idea he’d picked it up at Carmody’s place, but why? In a way, he didn’t want to know that either.

He hunkered down in the back seat and waited. The great thing about an SUV was there was a lot of room, so hiding in the back wasn’t so bad. He almost could have fallen asleep if he wasn’t so wired on his own insanity right now. The sky was a fragile pale blue of dawn by the time Muhlfeld came out to his car, carrying a travel mug full of coffee. He was in the front seat, door slammed shut, before he noticed ‘Why Lloyd Garver?’ written in black Sharpie on the interior roof. He was still looking up at it when Roan reached around the seat, grabbing him in a chokehold before slamming his fist into his face repeatedly, until blood splattered the windshield and he sagged limply, unconscious and bleeding from almost every orifice in his face.

Roan left then, walking away from the SUV, retrieving his bike on the next block and only when he started driving off did he realize he had no idea where he was going. Maybe he should just drive until he hit the border, until the road ended, until his bike fell to pieces.

He didn’t feel very satisfied, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was he had enjoyed it in spite of it all. His transition to monster was complete.

6 – Transitions From Persona To Object

By the time Roan wandered home, Dylan was asleep upstairs, and Roan watched him for a while, wondering if he should just sleep downstairs on the couch. It was almost morning, and exhaustion had finally gotten the best of him, along with the pills. The upside of the fact that he was on the verge of near collapse, the lion was too. Even the beast needed to sleep from time to time.

Figuring he was being stupid, he crawled into bed beside him and braced himself for bad dreams, but of course since he was ready for them, none came. But he did have a really bizarre one, full of the smells of color and the roar of blood, and it made him wake up, a sense of doom pressing down on him and smothering him. It was just the blanket, which he had pulled over his face.

Dylan was up, which surprised him, but in a way he was relieved. How awful – he was such a coward. Bad show for a lion.

He was in the shower, shampooing his hair (had it grown overnight? It felt like it), when Dylan came in. “You’re up early,” Roan said over the sound of running water.

“It’s noon,” he replied.

“It is?” He hadn’t looked at the clock. Perhaps he should have.

“What time did you get in last night?”

“Umm … it was dark. I stopped at the store, picked you up some more silken tofu.”

“I saw, thanks.” He put the toilet seat down and sat on the closed lid, so Roan could see him through the open slice of shower curtain. He was dressed in a green tank top and loose black yoga pants, and as he crossed his arms over his chest, he had that stubborn look on his face. Oh good, were they going to fight? ”So, I’m a little of tired of pretending something isn’t wrong. Are you ever going to tell me?”

“What do you mean?” He shot him an evil look. “Look, it isn’t you -”

“I know it isn’t me,” he snapped. “I’ve analyzed my own behavior a thousand times, to make sure I hadn’t pushed you away in some fashion. I haven’t, so it must be you. Why haven’t you touched me in two damn weeks? What happened at Willow Creek? I’d love to accuse you of having an affair, but I know you’re not. Why couldn’t you be having an affair like a normal gay guy? At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about you stepping out in front of a bus.”

He was rinsing the suds out of his hair, and he was glad, as Dylan couldn’t see his face with his wet hair hanging down in front of it. Yes, it was definitely longer. “What?”

“I know you’re depressed. I also think you’re suicidal. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Mean it.”

He swept back his damp hair and glared at him through a scrim of water and steam. “I wouldn’t, okay? Now will you hand me a towel?”

“No, not until you tell me what’s going on with you.”

“You’re really going to keep me trapped in a shower?” he sighed irritably, then figured what the hell, and told him about the progression of the virus. If he didn’t tell him, it was likely Dee would anyways.

Dylan seemed to listen impassively, not moving, not reacting until he was done. “Well, you’re just feeling self-piteous to believe that,” he claimed, getting up and grabbing a towel off the bar. “You’ll never be a full time lion.”

He seemed really certain of that. “How do you know?”

“Because you couldn’t be a smart ass as a lion. You live to annoy the shit out of people, Ro. You can’t do that as well as a cat.”

He had a point there, he could hardly deny it. It probably didn’t work like that, but he could hardly argue with him. He turned off the shower and got out, and Dylan gave him the towel. As he dried his hair,  Dylan asked, “So that’s why you won’t touch me? You’re afraid of lioning out?”

“I’m afraid it wants you dead.”

“What if it does? Are you going to stand for that? Does it think nothing’s going to happen to it if something happens to me?”

That was a good point, but it only distracted him for a moment. “That’s logic. I don’t think that applies to a cat.”

“But it must understand self-preservation. You’re still sharing a body, and if it does something to me, are you going to let it pass?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay then, we should be okay.”

Roan scrubbed the towel over his head before looking at him curiously. “Why are you not worried about this?”

“It’s you. You’re not going to hurt me.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “It’s not me we’re talking about -”

Dylan grabbed his face in his hands and kissed him, a full on, passionate kiss. It was a little too nice for his not quite numb libido, so he reluctantly pushed him away. “No, okay, no. I’m not risking your life gambling on a lion being sensible.”

“It’s because you bit me too hard that one time, right?”

“Yes! You can’t tell me you’d like me ripping out your throat.”

He considered that a moment. “It wants blood?”

“I told you what it wants.”

“But blood makes it happy?”

“I – I don’t know what makes it happy. I need a cat whisperer or a virus whisperer or something.”

Dylan did the strangest thing. He bit his bottom lip. That wasn’t strange in itself, as he often bit his lip while thinking, but this time he bit it until he broke the skin, until it started to bleed, a teardrop of blood welling on his lower lip. “Let’s give it a little something to shut it up, shall we?” He grabbed him again, and this time when he kissed him his lips were slick with blood. On one level, it was incredibly creepy and gross.

Of course, the lion loved it. It responded eagerly to the taste of Dylan’s blood, and while Roan was fighting the impulse to tear into him,  increase the flow of blood, he also found himself responding to him like a regular Human. It didn’t help that he was cold and Dylan was oh so warm. There was a growl/purr in the base of his throat as he pushed him back into the bedroom, sucking at his lower lip. Roan hated the taste of blood – his more than anyone else’s, but still – and yet it tasted so good; maybe it was just Dylan’s blood that tasted so good. All that vegetarianism and healthy living may have made his blood cleaner than most, or at least that’s what he told himself. The blood made him feel intoxicated, hot under the skin.

They ended up having the most intense and somewhat violent sex Roan had ever had, and afterwards he was filled with mixed feelings about it. Of course it felt good (god, had he missed sex), but the taste of blood was tacky in his mouth (both nauseating and enticing), and any sex involving blood play was kinky beyond belief.

He knew he’d bit Dylan’s lip, but he had to double check it to make sure he hadn’t bit a chunk off of it. As he cleared away some blood on his lip with his thumb, he noticed it was starting to swell, like he’d been punched in the face. “Shit. Did I hurt you?”

“Too many endorphins. I’m not feeling any pain right now,” Dylan replied. Then, after a moment, “It is throbbing a bit.”

“Shit, what about work?”

“What about it? If anyone asks, I’ll say I took a hit while sparring, just to see the look on Trevor’s face.”

“Trevor the maitre’d?”

“That’s him.”

“Figured. He looks like a Trevor.”

Dylan gave him a lopsided grin, and wiped some of the blood off Roan’s chin. “I missed you, you know.”

“How? I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Yes you have. Stop keeping me at arm’s length, Ro. I signed up for this crazy ride, you can’t scare me away.”

“You should be scared. This was fucking freaky.”

“And yet, pretty amazing.”

“Yeah, well …” he was saved from a further response by the ringing of the phone. It had actually rung before, while they were having sex, but they both ignored it. He didn’t have that excuse now.

Dylan got up, stepped into his yoga pants, and said, “I’m gonna go get some ice for the lip. Maybe you should answer that. Although, I won’t accept any excuse that keeps you away tonight.”

“Why, what’s tonight?”

“Gallery showing, remember?”

“Oh shit.” One of Dylan’s art school friends, a guy named Dominik Loncar, was in town tonight, for a showing of his art photos. Dylan said they had to go, because he promised he would, but he also warned him that Dominik was pretentious as hell back in school, and that condition had worsened since graduation. Since he had guessed Roan wouldn’t be able to be on his best behavior for more than thirty minutes, he also agreed they’d make an appearance, look at his photos, and leave reasonably quickly. At least now Dylan had the excuse of work. Also, Roan was convinced most of Dyl’s arty friends hated his guts, which Dylan always denied, but he knew since he was an ex-cop, most of his arty friends thought he was a fascist. Hanging around with a hockey team hadn’t helped.

Roan sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, feeling truly crazy. His boyfriend now had to cut himself so they could have sex without the lion trying to turn it into a slaughter. This was fucking bizarre and it couldn’t continue, and as good as it had felt, he thought he should really pull his Sig Sauer out from his dresser and blow his brains out. But first, he answered the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Hello Captain Sunshine,” Seb replied sarcastically. “Do I take it this means you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“The thing down in Tacoma.”

“What thing down in Tacoma?”

He sighed heavily. “Shit. The cat freak out is no longer an isolated incident.”

Wonderful. The universe just kept churning out these reasons to live. “What now?”

“A lion went on a rampage near Commencement Bay. The cops down there are still trying to piece together the whole story, but he caused a shitload of damage. Charged a wedding party in a church, killed three, mauled six, ate someone’s yappy little purse dog – the only good thing that happened – and three tranquilizer darts couldn’t put him down, so the rapid response team just blasted his ass back to the stone age. Took twelve shots to drop him, and by that time he was a red smear in the vestibule. We have a tentative ID as Philip Roland, best man’s brother.”

“Fuck. Did he have that chemical in his system?”

“That’s the working theory, although there may not be enough of him left to test. I’ve been going through some of the old reports on weird cat behaviors and other oddities, and I’ve found a couple that might be of interest. There was a domestic incident last week, where a woman shot her transformed husband with a shotgun, she said he broke down the basement door and started attacking furniture before going after her, and she was shocked because his transformation cycle had ended three days before. The evidence seems to back up her story, but now I’m wondering if I should have his tox screen fast tracked.”

“Where was this?”

“Bremerton.”

“Huh. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it.”

“Hey, neither did I ’till I started going through files. ‘Cause you know how we cops love our paperwork.”

“It’s the funnest thing in the world.” He wedged the receiver between his shoulder and ear, so he could free his hands to open his top dresser drawer and pull out a pair of boxers, mainly because he was cold. “So you think this is a thing.”

“Both you and your crazy old doctor lady have convinced me this is a thing. I don’t think Ava was the first, just the first one we noticed because her behavior was so atypical.”

“Has Rosenberg found anything?”

“So far? Well, she found a near chemical match last I heard. The weird stuff in Ava’s bloodstream seems pretty close to burn.”

Had he heard that right, or was the combined and dichotomous feeling of post coital afterglow and self-loathing making him slightly aphasic? “Burn?”

“You know, M80, glowstick, gleam – it’s a new club drug. From what I understand, a new, “cleaner” form of Ecstasy with a coke like kick.”

“Wow, how out of the loop am I? I’ve never heard of this.”

“And you call yourself a gay guy? I always knew you were really straight.”

“Yeah, I’m just into buttfucking for the affirmative action benefit.” That got a chuckle out of Seb, which was nice because it was so rare. Seb was often loathe to show any kind of emotion at all on the job, but Roan had come to understand it was a protective measure on his part. He didn’t want to get too hurt, to be disappointed by the people he couldn’t help, so he kept himself numb. “Is acting like Cujo a side effect?”

“See, now that’s the real weird thing. The known side effects of the stuff seem to be dehydration, nosebleeds, heart palpitations, respiratory distress, a lot of Ecstasy style stuff. To my knowledge, this hasn’t caused a psychotic break in anyone, although it’s a new drug and seems to be Northwest in origin. Maybe it hasn’t been around long enough for the psychotic breaks to be noticed.”

“Or maybe it’s only in infecteds.” There was no way that made any kind of sense, but as soon as Roan said it, it felt true. Was that it? Had it not been noted because normal people taking it didn’t have that kind of reaction?

He heard the squeak of Seb’s chair as he sat forward. Somewhere behind him in the station, an audibly  drunk guy was repeatedly yelling, “What about my rights?” “How would that work, Roan?” He wasn’t dismissing it; he sounded intrigued.

“I don’t know. I suppose that’s something I’ll have to ask Rosenberg.”

“Could a drug do that?” Roan almost answered, but realized it was rhetorical; Seb was just musing out loud, weighing the possibilities. “We just don’t know enough about the virus, do we? We still don’t know where this fucker came from.”

“My personal favorite is alien PETA members.”

“It would explain a lot.”

“Tons.”

“Ah shit, gotta go, Dixon’s headed this way.”

“Duck under the desk.” Dixon was one of those cops who was a terminal fuck up. No one ever knew how they kept their jobs, or why they persisted at it when they were so bad at it. It was one of those mysteries with no answer.

“Too late. Let me know if there’s any developments.”

“You too.” He hung up wondering if a drug could possibly be responsible for all the cat freak outs. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but why infecteds only? That part didn’t make sense.

Once he was sure he wasn’t going to put a gun barrel against his temple, he went downstairs and told Dylan that was too dangerous to ever attempt again, mainly because he was an infected and Dylan wasn’t, and having an open wound around an infected was a bad idea. Dylan, holding an ice cube wrapped in cheesecloth against his lip, said it wasn’t, because the only body fluid he was exposed to was saliva, and the virus had never been passed by saliva. Somehow it figured that Dylan would know that, because, being the guy he was, he probably went to infectedfacts.org when they started dating and read all about it. He told him he didn’t want him to be the first known case, so that was that. But Roan had a sneaking suspicion they would argue about this in the future.

Roan called Doctor Rosenberg, but had to leave a message because she didn’t pick up her phone. She was probably getting some sleep. So Roan did some searching on his computer.

The first result on “burn”as a drug turned up three months ago in someone’s Facebook post, and then it increased exponentially, although it still wasn’t widespread. If Nexus-Lexus could be trusted, it had gone as far north as Vancouver and as far south as Eugene, but so far it had been limited to the West Coast … for now. These things never stayed regional.

He then did a search of odd cat incidents in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, and it took hours to sort them out, but five he flagged. One was an article about the case in Bremerton that Seb mentioned, but the others were new to him. At the last minute, he decided to add an article about a panther that killed a horse in Cle Elum and mauled another (and got shot and killed for the trouble).

The gallery opening to the public was at eight, but there was a “private” opening starting at six thirty, which is the one they were heading to, and while Dylan’s bottom lip was no longer swollen, it did have a bit of a scab on it. It looked like he’d been punched, and Roan was certain that Dylan’s friends, who already thought he was fascist, would think he hit him. Considering he basically drank his blood during sex, hitting Dylan was actually the better option than the truth.

They were supposed to dress up a bit but not get too fancy, so in honor of Dylan’s pretentious friend, Roan wore paint splattered black jeans and a t-shirt that said in bold, fancy framed letters, ‘I Hate Attention Seekers’. Dylan, for his part, wore saggy jeans and a t-shirt proclaiming, ‘Where The White Women At?’ (Dominik was a friend in a technical sense, but Dylan didn’t care for him much, and the more pretentious he became, the more Dylan agreed that pissing him off was the only way forward).

They were the most dressed down people to show up at a gallery so small Roan actually drove past it without seeing it the first time. They got a couple of evil looks from women so thin Roan felt like he should give them twenty bucks to go get a sandwich, and men so camp they couldn’t have been gayer if they were wearing outfits made of dildos. Still, Dylan knew a lot of people there and was greeted warmly by many. When Dylan turned to introduce him to people, Roan always held out his hand and smiled warmly while saying, “Hi, I’m his asshole boyfriend, Roan. You may have seen me in Truncheon Beating Weekly.”

Although there were a couple of awkward handshakes and uncertain looks, a small Asian woman named Clea burst out laughing, and a relatively good looking emo guy named Keenan snickered and said he was more of a dickhead, but he was aspiring to be an asshole someday. Roan told Dylan he could invite Clea and Keenan over anytime.

Dominik decided to be fashionably late to his own show, so they wandered around the small gallery, looking at Dominik’s photos. Most were blown up to poster sizes, although a few were smaller, and they were following a theme: half naked, scrawny guy with bleached hair and black roots (Dylan confirmed it was Dominik) in a Southwestern desert scape, usually on or near a road. Every now and then there was a plaque or a sign, declaring “Isolation is a place” or some pretentious shit like that, but then they came to the photos where he was laying on black strips of asphalt with his pants pulled down to expose his ass. “Is he gay?” Roan wondered, trying to make sense of the photo in front of him.

“No. He’s very vain, though.”

“So I’m gathering. The composition’s nice, but why’s he humping a road?”

“He’s not humping a road.” Dylan paused, and leaned in to study the photo more closely. “Is he? Oh dear god, tell me he’s not humping a pothole.”

“I can’t tell from this angle. Is this a stage of madness? Is he so crazy from isolation he’s now fucking a freeway system?”

“I -” Dylan shook his head helplessly. “I am now scared. Is it wrong of me to hope he’s on drugs?”

“If he’s not on drugs, he should be put on them immediately.”

When Dominik showed up around seven, he was wearing black sunglasses and an apricot orange ascot, and Dylan had to hold Roan back from going over and strangling him with his own scarf. Not because he hated him – he didn’t know him well enough to hate him – but because he looked like such a pretentious prick Roan almost couldn’t stand it. He was having a full body allergic reaction to this guy, but rather than seize, his hands were making involuntary fists, and he had to resist the urge to shout, “Roadhumper, nice of you to show up.”

Dylan had decided they’d had enough, and he went to greet Dominik before they left. Dominik treated him with an almost fey curtness, and he seemed to have a slight hint of an obviously fake Eurotrash accent. Rather than introduce himself, Roan gave him a toothy smile, and asked, “So, you bleached your butthole, huh? Just for the photos, or is it a hobby?”

Dylan quickly grabbed him and hustled him out the door as Roan shouted, “Ta ta, toots. Great ass!”

Once outside, he exclaimed, “I can’t believe you’d say that to a friend of mine! Do you want to -” It was here that Dylan had to stop talking because he was laughing so hard.  He leaned against the stucco outer wall of the gallery, and Roan joined him, mainly chuckling at Dylan’s response.

After a moment, when he caught his breath and wiped away tears from his eyes, he asked, “Did he really? I didn’t notice.”

“I think he shaved too.”

“Oh god,” Dylan replied, laughing again. Once he’d gotten a hold of himself, he said, “I love you, hon, but I can’t take you anywhere.”

“No, you can’t,” Roan agreed. “I’m too much of a smart ass.”

They shared a smile at what was now a private reference. After all, hadn’t Dylan told him he was too much of a smart ass to become a lion permanently? Maybe he had a point after all.

They went home, mainly so Dylan could change and get to work. Roan found out Rosenberg had called him back, but her message was unexpected. “I’m testing a theory, but I need fresh infected blood, so get over to Saint Joe’s.” What theory? And why the hell was she at Saint Joe’s? He tried calling her back, but he went straight to machine again. Damn it.

So while Dylan left for Silver, he took the bike to Saint Joseph’s Hospital, figuring if he got in a wreck on the way, she could have all the blood she wanted.

It took him a bit to track her down, but he found her in the hematology lab. As soon as she saw him she ordered him to take off his coat and roll up his sleeve, but he told her she wasn’t getting drop one until she told him what this was about. It seemed to put her out, but she told him she suspected that there were chemicals in the toxin isolated from Ava’s bloodstream that reacted a certain way with the virus, but she wanted to test it in real time, hence his blood. That seemed reasonable, so while she took some, he told her about “burn”, and his theory  that maybe it would cause a reaction in infecteds it wouldn’t in normals. She agreed that was an avenue to explore, but now that meant she had to get some normal blood, and he was a total bastard for giving her all this extra non-paid work to do, but at least she said that last part affectionately.

As he was leaving the hospital, he suddenly wondered where he could get some “burn”. Hell, a gay club like Panic would be rife with the stuff, wouldn’t it? He wondered if he had enough pull as Dylan’s boyfriend to get some cheap.

An ambulance was bringing in someone on a stretcher as he was leaving, all chaos and one of the EMTs shouting the brief version of the story and the injuries to the ER staff, and he almost walked out without looking until the smell of the blood froze him in his tracks.

The blood smelled familiar.

Suddenly he tuned in to what the female paramedic was saying, and followed the stretcher. “ – dumped in an alley off Pine and 43rd,” she was saying. “In and out of consciousness, a concussion and maybe a hematoma, numerous broken bones and blunt trauma injuries. He got jumped and beaten by at least two people with weapons of some kind, but the guy still had his wallet so it wasn’t a mugging.”

The ER physician was a Korean man with short, spiky black hair and a kind face, although he looked all of twenty two (he was probably really about ten years older). As they transferred the man from the stretcher to a hospital gurney, the doctor shined a pen light in his one good eye (the other was swollen shut) and asked, “Can you hear me?” Without glancing up at the paramedics, he asked, “What’s his name?”

Roan had slipped in without any of the team noticing him, probably because he had been sticking to the back, out of everyone’s way. “Holden Krause,” he said, shouldering his way to the side of the gurney. He leaned over and asked, “Holden, it’s Roan. Can you hear me?”

He was almost impossible to recognize. He was covered in blood, his shirt had been cut off by the paramedics, but his torso was still caked in the stuff, the flesh bruise purple where it wasn’t bloody red (he was pretty sure one of the bruises on his rib cage was shaped like a partial boot print). His face was bruised, bloody, and swollen, to the point where if Roan hadn’t recognized the scent of his blood, he wouldn’t have been able to visually identify him. Roan was tempted to grab his hand, but he saw the one on his side was curled up, the fingers bloated like sausages – someone had stamped on his hand, broken fingers, and maybe he’d broken some attempting to defend himself. It had to have been at least two guys, maybe more, and they’d had to have taken Holden by surprise. There was no way, under normal circumstances, Holden could have been beaten this bad.

Holden’s one good eye opened, and there was haziness there, broken  vessels like little pinpricks of blood in the white of his eye, the blue iris clouded like a rainy day. But Roan knew he recognized him, and didn’t even seem all that surprised to see him. He fixed him with a surprisingly steely gaze, and croaked in a dry, harsh voice, “Judge Garver.”

A huge male nurse with the shoulders of fullback grabbed Roan by the shoulders and said, politely but firmly, “Please sir, clear the area, family isn’t allowed here.” As he was pulled away, he nodded at Holden, letting him know he understood what he was trying to say.

Judge Garver, the circuit court judge who got drunk and angry the other day. He probably didn’t appreciate Holden beating him down and threatening him, so he got some thugs of his own to beat Holden’s ass. Bullies didn’t like being bullied.

Roan should have been angry, but it was worse. He felt ice cold down to his marrow as he left the hospital, as focused as a heat seeking missile.

It was time for Garver to get a little justice meted out to him. And there was no way in hell he was going to like it.

But Roan would. He already knew he was going to enjoy this immensely.

5 – Pretty Visitors

Roan stayed on the scene until the ambulance took her away, strapping the virtually comatose cat down to a reinforced stretcher with so many ties Roan found it hard not to laugh. She’d be lucky to wake up ever, so why not put a few more plastic ties on her? It was absurd, and yet he knew it was regulations, and they were just doing their jobs. Just like putting on what looked like HazMat suits was just part of the regs.

He got Rosenberg on Seb’s phone and left him to talk to her as he wandered off, finding both his bike and a stray Percocet in his pants pocket. He dry swallowed it before putting on his helmet and taking off.

He decided to stop by Silver since it was on the way, but he pulled off into a Starbucks on the neighboring block first, mainly so he could duck into their restroom, clean blood off his face, and make sure he looked reasonably Human and presentable. He still didn’t look like Silver clientèle, but fuck it. He zipped up his jacket to cover up the bloodstains on his shirt (mostly his, some the leopard’s), and hoped that normal people couldn’t smell it as much as he could.

Silver was a sleek restaurant of smoky glass and brushed chrome, going for a retro feel but a classy one, less ’50′s diner, more grounded space yacht. The only thing that took the polish off its aura was the fact that it was taking up the corner of a downtown street that wasn’t nearly as upscale as it was. But the gentrification was just beginning. Give it a year, and it might be.

He walked into a lobby of burgundy velvet and warmly polished wood, a scent like brandy and thyme overlaying the char of meat (seventy five dollar steaks were big here – who the hell would pay seventy five dollars for a chunk of beef?) and came up to a maitre’d in black tie and tails. He looked like he’d fallen off a wedding cake.

He raised a slim black eyebrow imperiously, clearly gearing up to tell him he wasn’t suitably attired, but Roan cut him off. “I’m just here to give my partner Dylan his house key. He left them at home, and he’s gonna need ‘em.” This was bullshit, but just saying “Can I see my boyfriend” wouldn’t get him past the door.

“Partner?” he repeated, then scoffed, looking into the restaurant. Over his shoulder, Roan could see the bar, a curve of silver and translucent glass like ice. “I knew he was gay. He’s too good looking to be straight.” He looked him over once more, but with new eyes. Oh, he was gay too, wasn’t he? Yep. Of course an upscale restaurant would have to have the stereotypical efficient, obnoxiously fussy gay. It was probably seen as a necessary accessory, like linen napkins and a rageaholic chef. “Fine, we’re slow tonight, you can go see him, but don’t try this when Weaver’s on the floor. He doesn’t like the staff displaying their gayness.” At that, he rolled his eyes, unspoken disgust at Weaver’s policy, and gestured him on with a waive of his hand.

He assumed Weaver was the manager. So, was he a straight who didn’t like gays but hired them anyways, or was he a self-hating gay? He’d have to meet him to know.

It must have been a slow night. The lighting was low, “moody”, but he could still see that only four of the tables in this section (there were at least two others, one a VIP room that no ordinary peon could access) were occupied. There were two people at the opposite end of the bar, a woman in a red dress and a man in a suit who looked like he was either a lawyer or a white collar criminal (or both).

Dylan was behind the bar, looking handsome and posh in a long sleeved black dress shirt and a silver vest that looked like it was the closest thing the place had to a uniform. (Dylan wasn’t the type to own a silver vest. The only guy he ever knew that might was Paris, and even then, only as a joke.) Roan took one of the tall stools at the empty end of the bar, and that’s when Dylan glanced down and saw him. He gave him a genuine, lazy smile, and said, “I know what you want.”

He was tempted to say, “I doubt it, it’s not on the menu,” but kept the innuendo to himself as he watched Dylan work. It may have been a new bar, with more space and more clothing, but he still moved like he’d always worked here, picking up a crystal highball glass and pouring a scoop of crushed ice into it in one smooth motion, then decanted some juice in it before coming over and placing it in front of him, on a coaster that looked like it was made of cork and wicker. Dylan leaned on the bar, close but not too close.

“Pineapple juice?” Roan asked. “You couldn’t Irish it up a bit?”

“Since when do you like whiskey?”

“I don’t. I just don’t want to feel like the designated driver.” He sipped the juice. Fancy place or not, it was still the equivalent of store bought. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad. It’s kind of nice not being deafened, and having a shirt on is a novelty.”

“It’s killing you, isn’t it?”

“No.” He glanced around, perhaps to make sure no other staffer was close, then admitted, “It’s a little staid. It seems a bit unreal, so formal and … regulated. I feel like a butler.”

“This is not your world.”

“Is this anyone’s world? It’s bizarre. I mean … my life is nuts. I guess I got used to nuts.”

“What kind of nuts are we talking about here?”

Dylan raised an eyebrow at that, and had to fight down a smile. “Don’t you start.”

“It was an innocent question.”

“Innocent my culo,” he replied, using the Spanish word for ass, possibly because this place didn’t like its employees swearing. What a change from Panic, where almost everything was okay, as long as it was consensual and not a violation of the health code (in full view of anyone who might complain). “You are many things, Ro, but innocent has never been one of them.”

“Well, if you’re going to take that attitude, I’ll just go buy my juice at the 7-11. By the way, how much is this gonna set me back?”

“Nothing, I’ll say I drank it. But, if you were a customer, five bucks.”

“For a pineapple juice? This isn’t even a proper glass.”

“It’s an expensive place. The cheapest salad is twenty five dollars.”

“I hope that comes with extra croûtons and a hand job.”

Dylan laughed, and instantly clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. He glared at him, trying to give him the death stare, but there was too much mirth in his eyes to properly sell it. “Bastard,” he finally muttered. “Making me laugh.”

“What, laughter is a crime in this place? Fuck it then. Let’s blow this pop stand. Better yet, let’s get some of those Improv Everywhere people in here to make them have conniption fits.”

“My first night on the job, and you’re already planning to destroy it.”

“Not destroy, it’s such a harsh word.” He paused, mainly for effect. “I prefer bloodless coup. Or bloody coup, as long as there’s some kind of coup, I’m good.”

Dylan was shaking his head, but he was still smiling. No matter what, Roan knew he could make him laugh, and that was a good feeling. “Did you just come here to sabotage me or what?”

“Curses, foiled again. No, well, besides that, I just wanted to let you know I might not be home when you get home.”

His face fell, and while he tried to smooth it over, Dylan clearly wasn’t happy. “Why not?”

He gave him the shorthand version of what happened at Club Damage. He seemed as bewildered as Roan felt. “What? How the hell did it get into Damage?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. And that smell … it was like a chemical factory, even counting out the perfume. I haven’t smelled a lot of poison, but it wasn’t anything that seemed possible. All I could  think was chemical weapon, but that doesn’t make sense.”

“Are you okay?”

“Superhuman, remember? She never even scratched me.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

No, it wasn’t, was it? He was ready to lie, but Dylan’s dark eyes were sympathetic and imploring. With a sigh, he admitted, “I dunno. This is really bothering me, and I can’t say why.”

Dylan briefly put his hand over his before removing it, a quick caress, and probably all the public display of gayness that he dare risk here. “Because it’s a puzzle, and you do love your puzzles.” He said it with a kind of affectionate weariness, like he knew that Roan was going to preoccupied and busy for the near future.

“I love you too, you know,” he replied.

Dylan gave him a brittle smile. “I know. But if you don’t solve this, it will kill you. I should be used to being a detective’s husband by now.”

“How do you think it is for me, being a bartender’s husband? Especially when that husband will only give me pineapple juice.”

There was an overweight guy approaching the bar, looking like the most harried ad man in existence, so Dylan gave him a sly smile as he turned away. “Gotta earn better,” he whispered with a wink.

He should have known – blackmail. Bastard. Husbands were all alike.

Of course the case wasn’t why he’d be home late, it was Dee chewing him out. But he didn’t want to admit he’d be home late because of an ex-boyfriend, even though there wasn’t a chance in hell they’d ever sleep together and Dylan knew it.

Dee had an apartment in a downtown complex with decent security, although the weather beaten brick facade made it look more run down and an easier mark. For a man who hated heights, it was probably ironic that he lived on the top floor (the eighth), but he didn’t like having people over his head (in an apartment sense).

As if Roan by himself wasn’t enough to put lie to the stereotype that all gay men were neat and good decorators, Dee nailed it home. His apartment was generally a mess, a riot of dirty clothes and unopened mail, unwashed dishes and empty cartons. He basically cleaned up when he had days off, so then it looked like less than a pig sty, but during the work week it was like visiting a straight frat boy’s place, and it caused  no end of amusement. It even smelled like stale beer and Chinese food starting to go south. He wondered how Luke, his boyfriend, liked this. (But he was a male nurse, just as busy, so maybe his place was similar.)

“Weren’t you two moving in together?” Roan asked, as he moved Dee’s uniform jacket aside and sat down on the ratty blue sofa that Dee had had as long as he had known him.

Dee was obviously just home from work. His hair was still wet from the shower, pasted down to his scalp, and he wore a grey sweatshirt and navy sweatpants. He looked tired but frazzled, which was typical after work. “Luke and I? I don’t know that I’m ready, really. I thought I was, I’m getting old … but I don’t know if I could actually live with another person .”

“How’d you find out?”

Dee fixed him with a bitter look, lips thinning, as he sat down in the recliner that was his game chair (where he sat to play video games). “What, you just assume -”

“Yes.”

He glared at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Fine. We went to Ocean Shores for a weekend, shared a hotel room, and I found out he has annoying habits.”

“Everybody has annoying habits. You just work around them or learn to live with them.”

“Is that what Dylan does with you?”

“Ha. Yes. He and I spend time pursuing separate interests, we both have loner tendencies, and that works for us. He does yoga and paints, and I break heads and become a lion. It’s a win win.”

“Is it? He seems to think you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“He’s a very insightful man. Is there anything else?”

Dee stared at him again, but this time it was suspicious. “Did – did you just admit you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown?”

“What am I going to say at this point, Dee? It’s a slow motion collapse. The pills keep it at bay, but it won’t hold forever, just like I won’t be Human forever. Got it, don’t need it spelled out for me. But thanks.”

Dee now sat forward, hands on his knees. “What? What was that about not being Human forever? Shit, is this related to Willow Creek? It is, isn’t it? What did you find out?”

Roan knew he should tell Dylan first, but he was tired and a bit headache-y from the partial change. Besides, Dee would understand what he was saying from a medical perspective. So he took a deep breath, and told him what Rosenberg had uncovered, and what she speculated might happen. Dee took it in with growing disbelief, or at least that’s what Roan decided his slightly widening eyes and slightly unhinging jaw were all about.

When Roan finished talking, Dee said breathlessly, “Bullshit. Bullshit! There’s no way -”

“No way what? I’m becoming more lion? I fractured a man’s skull with one punch, and I was trying to go easy on him. I saw the tendons humans don’t have, I saw the bone spurs in my hands. Sometimes, if I press the skin hard enough, I swear I can feel them.”

“You’re not going to turn into a lion one day and not come back. That is not happening.”

“Are you sure? Can you give me a written guarantee?”

“Don’t be an asshole -”

“It’s what I do best.”

“Are you ever gonna stop interrupting me?”

He shrugged, and inexplicably felt like he was on the verge of tears. “I know I’m hurting Dylan, and I know that’s what you called to lecture me about, but there’s a danger you’re not aware of. I think I may actually hurt him, physically. I think I’m losing control. I don’t want to hurt him, Dee, but to keep the lion back I need more drugs than I have.”

“You don’t want to hurt him, do you?”

“No, of course not, how can you even ask that? But since he’s the only thing keeping me Human, I think the lion would be glad to have him gone.”

Dee stared at him for an uncomfortably long minute. “You do know how insane that sounds, right?”

He nodded. “If you think it sounds crazy, imagine being me.” He wiped the back of his hand beneath his eyes, getting rid of any lingering moisture.

Dee continued staring at him like he was the craziest person he’d ever met, which was saying something from a paramedic – along with cops and social workers, they were often the front line of the crazy brigade. “You’re gonna get angry at me, I know, but people addicted to painkillers can have delusions -”

“It’s not a delusion, Dee. The lion is sneaking out, when I don’t want it to appear it does. It’s getting stronger and I’m drowning. Rosenberg only confirmed it’s physical, not just mental. Did you know I can feel it? In my shoulders especially; they almost always feel slightly dislocated. It’s not pain, not exactly, it’s just the feeling that they’re loose, not perfectly attached. Whoever glued me together didn’t use enough.”

He grimaced. “Did you talk to Rosenberg about any of this?”

“Of course. She said it wasn’t in my head, it looked like everything has changed since the last time I was scanned, even my brain waves are changing … and she wants me to come back to Willow Creek. She wants to do more tests, more and more, until I’m nothing but tissue samples on a plate. I think she’d be happy to keep me there for the rest of my life.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“I do. But I’m this century’s equivalent of the Elephant Man. I am her medical legacy to the world, and I’d be an idiot not to realize that.”

“That’s kinda conceited, you know.”

“I know. Am I wrong?”

Dee gazed at him steadily, for once at a loss for words, and then stood up, saying, “This is too heavy, I need a drink. Want one?”

“No, but thanks. I oughta get going.” He stood and wondered where he was going. Home, he supposed. Maybe he could stop at the store on the way home, pick some stuff up. Truth be told, he just liked wandering stores after midnight; it was his favorite time to shop. Almost no one was in the store, and those that were seemed as strange as you. It was a gathering place for the lonely, the desperate, and the misanthropic; the bar of the ’00′s.

“You have to tell Dylan.”

He sighed heavily. “Yeah, I know, but he’s gonna tell me he loves me no matter what, and I don’t want to hear that. I want him to call me a freak and leave while he still can. Talk to him, see if you can wake up his sense of self-preservation.”

“Didn’t you just say he was the only thing keeping you Human?”

“Yeah, but maybe he shouldn’t. Straddling two worlds is killing me.”

At the door, when Roan was half way outside, Dee said, “So the virus is progressing. Maybe you just need a little more time to adapt to it. Just ’cause the lion’s winning the battle now doesn’t mean it will win the war.”

Roan didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. It was an interesting theory, but just a theory.

On his way down to the parking lot, his phone hummed in his pocket, and since it was Rosenberg he answered it. “Yeah?”

“You bastard, you couldn’t let me stay home and have a drink and watch Star Trek repeats, huh? No, you have to get me involved in this fakakta case,” she said, pausing to take an angry drag off a cigarette.

“You watch Star Trek?”

“This from the punk rock nerd. Don’t you start.”

“What’s so fakakta about the case? Besides the obvious.”

“Everything.”

“She still alive?”

“No, you were right, she didn’t make it. Died before I got here. Know what killed her?”

“The poison.”

“You’d think so, but no. Acute agranulocytosis.”

Roan paused at the bottom stair and sat down. “In English please?”

“No white blood cells. None. Her bone marrow completely shut down. To be perfectly honest, it was probably a low level staph infection that killed her, but it couldn’t have if she didn’t have acute agranulocytosis.”

He was now glad he sat down. “So this was a pre-existing condition? Many infecteds can get immune system disorders -”

“Not on her chart. On her chart, she was as healthy as a non-infected, and at twenty two, you’d kinda hope.”

“You know who she is then?” Stupid question, but no one had told him yet.

“Yep. Ava Pagano, she’s listed as one of the women missing from the bachelorette party. Someone was relatively sober enough to tell the cops they didn’t know where Ava was, and your cop friend was smart enough to track her info down. We got a match. None of her friends  – if you can call ‘em that – even knew she was infected.”

“A recent infectee?”

“Maybe.”

“So she did enter the club Human.”

“Apparently so. Even the most sober of her friends can’t remember when she saw her last.”

Roan had to move aside as a young black man came down the stairs, also talking on a cell phone. They didn’t acknowledge each other in any way, locked in their own electronic worlds. It occurred to Roan the world was becoming more autistic, people were getting locked into their own little worlds (but voluntarily so, assisted by their machines), but he didn’t know what to do with such an observation, so he kept it to himself. “Okay, so … how did she change in the club without anyone noticing her? Why did her bone marrow shut down? Why did she smell like a chemical weapons factory?”

She snickered. “Chemical weapons factory? Cute. Well, I can’t answer any of those questions, except maybe they’re all related to the substance we found in her bloodstream.”

“Which is ..?”

“Fuck me if I know, sport. That’s why you’re a bastard for getting me involved in this fakakta case. I’ll be here all night ’cause of this.”

“I’ll buy you a box set,” he told her, his mind racing in a dozen different directions at once.

How did an infected but otherwise healthy young woman enter a club as a Human, and end the night as an infection ravaged cat corpse?

Not that it would be much comfort, but Rosenberg wouldn’t be the only one getting no sleep tonight.