18 – Fathom

It was the start of a wonderful day. It always was when you spent an hour at a crime scene in handcuffs.

The Federal Way cops didn’t seem to like him. The lead detective on the scene, a guy named Guldbrandsen, the one who had the cuffs slapped on him out of what seemed to be pure malice, kept giving him the stink eye, and kept asking him for the full story of what he found and why he’d come here, clearly thinking he was lying.

As he sat in the back of a squad car, the door open so he could sit half in and half out of the car, waiting for this idiocy to end, an Asian beat cop so young he barely looked old enough to be served in a bar came over to lean on the car. “You’re McKichan, aren’t you? I read that article about you. Hell of a picture, man.”

“So I noticed. Can you tell them who I am so they can get the cuffs off me?”

The kid, whose name was Park, grimaced painfully. “I think they know who you are, that’s why you have the cuffs on.”

Yeah, that figured. Why’d he ever think differently?

Finally they released him from the cuffs, and he was let go. They no longer thought he was responsible for murdering Hockney, or they did think he had but couldn’t prove it.  Guldbrandsen told him not to leave the state, and while Roan wondered who would be stupid enough to murder someone and call the cops, he remembered he may have actually arrested one of those people once.

No one told him anything, although his own perusal of the scene before the cops arrived told him whoever did this was very professional, and didn’t even try to make it look like a robbery. (Of course, the guy was a slob, so it could have been a subtle robbery.) He had the drugs in no obvious area, but Roan hadn’t even smelled any, although to be fair, over the smell of death, blood, unwashed laundry, and feet, he might not be able to pick up the scent of the drugs. But he wasn’t picking up that overwhelming chemical smell, which he was sure he would if tainted burn had been here or had been made here. Perhaps the chemicals were so dangerous they made it elsewhere; that would make sense. Clever meth cookers did just that.

He needed caffeine, so he drove to a near by coffee place, and he sat in the car in the parking lot and called Holden. He was beginning to think something was wrong – four rings and no response? Weird – but before he could fully panic, Holden picked up and answered with a sleepy, “Yeah?”

“How’d you get Pierce’s address?”

“How’d you know it wasn’t Dylan?”

“’Cause it wasn’t.”

He made an amused noise, and Roan could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “Pierce sent a proxy to meet you, but he didn’t admit to being a proxy. So I took his phone and ID, and used a reverse directory to find him.”

“Just like that?”

“You really want the gory details?” Holden sounded so pleased with himself he was almost purring. That was the thing about Holden: he liked having power over other people. As much as being a hooker took power away from you, Holden managed to maintain a great deal by being smarter than anyone thought. He liked people to think he was a dumb hooker, so he could revel in his triumph over them. It was a motivating factor in much of what he did. He came off like he didn’t care much of the time, but honestly he was a budding supervillain.

“No, I’ll just imagine and hope I’m wrong. So who was the proxy?”

“Joe Cullen. He lives downtown, in the Pennington apartment complex, 12-C.”

“Is it too much to hope you memorized this?”

“What, I don’t get to keep a little souvenir?”

“Look, this may have turned dangerous. I just paid a visit to Hockney, and I found him dead. He was murdered execution style, and I’d say he’d been dead for a couple of hours.”

“Shit.” Now Holden sounded more sober and less high on his own cleverness. “You don’t think there’s a connection, do you? I mean between me taking Joe’s stuff and Pierce ending up dead?”

“No, but I really don’t like it. I’m gonna go check on Cullen now, and I want you to watch yourself. I can come visit afterwards, or you can go hang around with some of your leather friends.”

“Actually Doug’s in town. I was gonna go visit him in a couple hours.”

Ah, the airline pilot who liked being tied up and whipped. “Maybe you should go visit him early.”

“I could hang out in the hotel cafe, get a mimosa. Sounds good. Call me when you find anything out.”

“Will do. If you get a bad feeling about anything, call me.”  Not that he had much to worry about with Holden, he could take care of himself. As long as they weren’t cops setting upon him with tasers and nightsticks.

He sat drinking his frothy mocha, which tasted more like cocoa than anything else, but gave him a good hit of caffeine. What did this all mean? So there was a drug out there, deliberately killing infecteds. Less than twenty four hours after he got the name of the guy who was distributing the drug on church grounds, the guy was found dead. Was there a mole in the church? Did someone pass the information on to whoever was behind it, and they had the guy killed before Roan could confront him? That might play in a bad crime thriller, but usually no pawn had that much knowledge of the top man to be worth the problem of killing. Usually the good drug ops ran like the NSA, with no lower peon knowing any more than they needed to know.

In that case, was it unrelated and coincidental? He really didn’t like coincidences, especially violent ones. Could it have been a warning for him? A ‘back off, infected’ ? Pawns were made to be sacrifices; that’s why they were called pawns.

He went to Cullen’s apartment, a very standard one that was just starting to show signs of going to seed, and Roan caught a glimpse of a man on the ground floor who was starting to step out of his place, but as soon as he saw Roan, he stared, and then suddenly jumped back inside the apartment and slammed the door. Who the hell was that? Somebody he arrested once? Actually, maybe. He didn’t remember them all, but he’d discovered they generally remembered him. One guy who was actually sanguine about it told him he remembered him because of his weird hair color (of course), and the fact that Roan had “the eeriest eyes I have ever seen”. He didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult, and never asked for clarification. Some things you were better off not knowing.

Cullen wasn’t home, and Roan was careful to sniff, to see if he could pick up a scent of blood, death, or cordite. He didn’t, so assumed the guy had a more standard day job or something. Rather than leave a note, he left, determined to return later. If he wasn’t home then, he just might see how good his lock picking skills were.

Back in the car, he called Dropkick, who picked up on the second ring. “What now, Angus?” she sighed.

“Need a favor,” he admitted, trying to win some honesty points. “I was just at a homicide scene in Federal Way, victim named Pierce Hockney. I need any kind of info you have on it when you get it, okay? This is important.”

“And illegal as fuck.”

“Granted. But I’m trying to track down the makers of the tainted burn, and he was in the loop. I’m wondering if his death is related.”

She paused long enough that he knew he had piqued her homicide detective interest. “To the burn trade? Or something else?”

“My mind is open at this point.”

“What do you know? Share.”

“I would if I could. All I know is the chemical in the burn is way too sophisticated to have been accidental or a byproduct of production.”

“I’ve heard of that. So it’s confirmed?”

“Very much so.”
She sighed wearily. “How much easier would our lives be if this was all accidental?”

“So much.” After a polite pause, he asked,  “How are you doing?”

“Okay. I’d ask you how you are, but I heard what happened at the campus the other day, so I’m not gonna.”

“Coward.”

“I am. And busy. Can I call you back?”

“Chief coming over?”

“Uh huh.”

“Right. Good luck.”

They all needed some luck right now. Especially infecteds, but that was probably a given.

He was looking up what he could on Joe Cullen on his laptop when he got a call. He was hoping it was Dropkick, but it was a caller he hadn’t expected. “Hey Roan, what’re you doing right now?”

It was Scott. He looked at his phone doubtfully, even though Scott couldn’t see him, and said, “Working on something. Why?”

“Join us for lunch. We’re at the Tiki Hut, and Grey is determined to get you into the gym and teach some of the younger defensemen how to fight properly.”

He sighed heavily. “I can’t. I’ll say it a million times: I can’t spar with Humans anymore. I fractured someone’s skull with one punch, and I was trying to go easy on him. I can’t judge my strength anymore.” He didn’t say that when he meant to go hard, he put his fist right through a skull. It wasn’t something he liked to think about.

“I’ll grant you, that’s pretty bad.”

“No shit.”

“But you can still join us for lunch.”

“It’s a nice offer, but -”

“You owe me. Come by.”

Okay, yes, he did, but he never thought he’d call him on it, or at least not in such a meager way. As it was, his trolling for Joe wasn’t turning up anything useful, so he had little to do but wait for Cullen to show up, or go grill Bolt again, but he had a feeling that was less than useless. If there was a mole in the church, then he had to think of a way to play him (or her), make them expose themselves. He was just going to have to think of a way to make that happen.

The Tiki Hut was one of those deliberately cheesy restaurants that wanted to seem fun and camp, but tried way too damn hard. There was lots of fake dried grass fringe, little figures of hula girls and boys, small tiki head decorations mimicking the larger one that sat in the corner of the dining room, wearing oversized novelty sunglasses and a multicolored lei around its nonexistent neck. The staff all wore Hawaiian shirts, and half looked mortified by it.

At a large table near the back of the room, Grey, Scott, Tank, and Jeff were sharing what looked like a platter of pineapple chicken and some kind of salad, and while he kind of expected it, no one was drinking beer. There seemed to be a preponderance of water, tea, and soda. Must have been a game tonight, or just a practice skate.

As he neared the table, Scott stood up, and said, “Hey, just in time to help me get a new pitcher from the bar.”

“They don’t have waiters for that?” he replied, but he knew that this was a ruse for some reason.

“You make a guest work? That’s just rude,” Tank said.

Roan gave them a sarcastic wave as he walked past, and the guys all waved back, except for Jeff, who for some reason gave him the black power salute. Maybe he meant it as just a power salute, or it was a gesture he just wasn’t familiar with.

At the bar, which was covered with the faux bamboo that the rest of the place was lousy with, the attractive dark haired, dark eyed bartender instantly appeared, eying Scott like a tasty snack. He asked for another pitcher of ice tea with lemon and lime slices, and while she agreed readily, she added, “You could have asked your server, you know.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to stretch my legs a bit,” he said, as a new customer appeared at the end of the bar, and the woman had to wander away.

Roan looked at him. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Scott gave him a  look he could only describe as melancholy. “I wanted to make sure you were all right. Last time we saw you, you were in pretty shitty shape.”

He nodded in agreement. “It wasn’t a shining moment for me. But I’m trying to hold it together.”

“Look, I’m not gonna preach at you, ’cause I’m the last person that should, but you need to get some help.”

Roan gave him a modified stink eye. “Help for what?”

“Whatever’s going on with you. I’m guessing depression, which I know all about. I spent most of my teen years splitting my time between hockey and therapy.”

He studied him warily. Scott was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt (not hockey related, unless you considered Molson beer a vital part of hockey), and looked more normal than he’d ever seen him, and it was almost weird. The same was true of Grey, who was wearing an under armor shirt as opposed to a t-shirt, and since it was essentially sleeveless, it showed off not only how well muscled his arms were, like limbs of sculpted concrete, but a new tattoo on his right bicep (it looked like a rose). Tank was wearing a mustard yellow t-shirt that had on it, in big white letters, ‘I Kick Ass For Free’, which Roan was willing to bet team members bought him. Tank always looked odd – again, like the French Canadian, jock Lane Staley – but he still seemed more at home than almost anyone else, even the poor employees in their Hawaiian shirts. Again, how did he end up with these weirdos? “So you’re a depressive too? Why? You’re a gorgeous bi jock – the world is made for your kind. Minus the bi, but keep that on the down low and you’re golden.”

He smirked. “I am. But I know you’re joking. Depression is a chemical imbalance, not logical.”

“Yeah, I know. So do you take anti-depressants?”

“Oh fuck no. The side effects fucked up my game. I’ve found other ways to cope. Sex is great.”

“That it is.” He noticed Scott smiling at him, and asked, “That wasn’t a come on, was it?”

Scott shrugged. “I’m gonna bag you one of these days. I always get what I want.”

“That why you’re such an arrogant bastard?”

That surprised a loud, genuine laugh out of him, and he slapped him on the back in a friendly way, but it was still hard enough to make him jolt. “Awesome. You’re like the coolest guy I’ve ever met, you know that? You’re like Tank, you’re fearless. And not in a bullshit, extreme sports kind of way, but in a genuine “who gives a fuck” kind of way. That’s rare.”

“You just compared me to Tank?” Again, was that an insult or a compliment? Really it could have gone either way.

“I know, he’s crazy, but he’s also a legend in the making. He has more natural talent than anyone I’ve ever played with; he’s gonna make it out. Most of us minor league players will never graduate to the NHL, but I know he’s going, because he’s too good to stay. And when he gets in, he’ll be a superstar. Or as close to a superstar as a goalie ever gets. And that’s how you’re like him: you’re a legend in the making. I’m gonna tell my grandkids about knowing you, and knowing him. You have it harder, though, it’s never easy being a trailblazer, as you take all the shit that the people coming up behind you will never take, but know that to many people you are and will be a hero.”

Roan scoffed. “Some hero.”

“So you’re not always heroic? So what? No one can be. That isn’t the point. You’re an infected who refused to become a hermit just because society is scared of you and treats your kind like dangerous lepers. That’s a bravery few have, and you’re clearing a path for others to follow behind you. You’re not gonna be perfect, you’re gonna fuck up, but none of that negates the fact that you’re the first. So when you get down, try and remember that you have a smoking hot guy who loves you, a ton of people who need and admire you, and a great looking dude who’d be happy to fuck you stupid. That’s more than most people have.”

He looked at him dubiously. “Let me guess. You’re the dude?”

Scott kept smirking, but it was almost a smile. “See any other great looking guys here?”

He was partially joking, but Roan decided to think about it. “Well, Tank’s pretty cute, if you go for that type.”

“Sir, you wound me,” he replied, almost laughing.

He felt like he had a rebuttal for nearly everything Scott had said about him, but he had a feeling Scott would rebut his rebuttals.  There was something about him that suggested you could give him nonsense, but he’d swat it right back at you without breaking a sweat. You couldn’t make an argument he couldn’t counter in one way or another. “You’re a good Captain, aren’t you?”

“I try. I treat all my guys the same, even those that I’d happily shove in front of a bus.”

“Are there a lot of those?”

“Let’s put it this way: those guys back there, I can imagine being friends with them still in five years,” he said, jerking his head back towards the table. “But they’re pretty much it.”

“Even Zach?”

“Ah, poor Zach,” he replied, as the bartender returned with a sweaty glass pitcher, jingling with ice. “I love that kid, but hockey’s gonna eat him alive.”

He was pretty sure he knew what he meant. He seemed like a sweet kid, but that was the problem – sometimes sweetness hurt more than helped. In this world, you needed a little animal in you to see you through.

Ah, so that’s what he had in common with Tank.

He enjoyed some pineapple chicken and lemon lime tea with the guys, who talked about a lot of things, none of them important or involved with death. It turned out that Jeff had seen Milk, and he felt the raised fist thing was like a gay power salute. That made Roan laugh until he was almost crying, and the other guys did too. Even Jeff joined in when he stopped being annoyed. He couldn’t deny it – these guys often made him feel better, even when they didn’t mean to. And some of what Scott said was still sticking with him, still rattling inside the empty cave that was his skull. He had made some very valid points.

There was an evening skate, and they invited him to come by and get in a trash talking contest with them (they were inviting heckling; was this a macho guy thing, or a macho team sports thing?) when his phone rang. It was Dropkick, so he excused himself and stepped outside to answer it.

“Hey Dropkick. Got something for me?”

“Yeah. It’s not solid, it’s tentative, but if it’s true, you’re fucked.”

“How is that news?” With a sigh, he asked, “What is it?”

“It seems the gun used to kill Hockney might be the same exact kind – if not the same exact one – used in a few drug murders throughout Washington, all connected to a Mexican gang that calls itself Demonios Sin Miedo, DSM for short.”

“Demons Without Fear? Very dramatic.”

“You get what this might mean, right?”

“Hockney was white.”

“The majority of the victims have been white and Asian; there’s only two Hispanics on the victim list so far, and only one was non-resident. We’re not sure if they’re trying to move in on someone else’s territory or have been using people of other ethnic extractions as low level stringers, but if the Feds know they’re not sharing that information with us.”

“Oh shit. The Feds are in on this?”

“On the DSM case, big time. If Hockney’s one of the vics, they’re gonna take the investigation.”

“Fuck.” The Federal guys weren’t big on sharing with anyone. Unless it was blame, then they were more than happy to spread the wealth.

But there were worse things. If Hockney was somehow connected to DSM, and the DSM were supplying the burn, it was the infected who were fucked most of all. There’d be no finding the source, not any time soon, and there’d be no containing it either. Tainted burn would start spreading out worldwide; it would go global. All infected stupid enough to take it would pay the price.

And he’d be unable to do anything about it, except watch them all die.

17 – Blood

Roan woke up, stuffed up, headachy, and feeling like a complete dick. Did anyone know how to make an ass of himself like he did? He wished they gave a medal for that, as he’d have a shelf full of them, which at least he could melt down for scrap.

The room he was in didn’t look or smell familiar, but Dylan was sleeping beside him, so he wasn’t too worried. He was unlikely to transform and go on a rampage and bring Dylan with him.

He remembered everything as he walked to the bathroom. Kevin’s place, right. Did they ever settle that? No, probably not. Hard to settle things when you’re out cold. He took way too many fucking pills. But the worst part? He needed more. His head really hurt.

He washed his face in the hottest water he could stand, until his entire face was the same uniform color of red, so no one could tell he’d been crying. He was starving too, his stomach one solid knot of need, although the rest of him felt strangely hollow, save for a residual ache in all his joints. He flexed his fingers and wondered if he could feel the bone spur claws. He thought he could, he thought he could feel their points beneath the thin skin of his hand, but it could have just been his knuckles. He could have been feeling what he wanted or expected to feel.

He needed pills, and dug a couple of Percocet out of his bag, but he knew if he didn’t eat something first he’d just vomit it back up. He changed into sweatpants and a tank top and padded downstairs, being as quiet as possible.

It was impossible to say what time it was, as it was light grey outside (could be very early in the morning, could be mid-afternoon; you had to love murky Western Washington weather). But once he was downstairs he saw Kevin’s goofy living room clock (it was one of those that looked like Felix the Cat, with moving eyes and a “wagging” tail as a pendulum), he saw it was just shy of six thirty in the morning, and heard someone moving around in the kitchen. There was a smell of coffee and toasted bread, which was enough to make his stomach growl. Somehow he knew it was just Kevin in the kitchen, so he decided to bite the bullet, swallow his pride, or whatever euphemism, metaphor, or saying was applicable here.

He appeared in the kitchen archway as Kevin was pouring himself a mug of coffee from a classic glass coffee pot. “Hey Roan. Want some coffee?”

“I don’t know if my stomach can take raw caffeine right now.”

“Well, help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. I don’t think we have any orange juice, but we have assortment of random crap. You’re free to have whatever you want.”

“Hot sauce?”

“You’re free to drink it, but only if I can film it for YouTube.”

Kevin was dressed in a dark but semi-casual suit and a dark navy tie, which would have told him he was getting ready for court if the time hadn’t. “Testifying today?” Roan guessed, as he searched the fridge. Kevin had some blueberry pomegranate juice, which he figured was good enough, and he saw on the second shelf a huge ceramic bowl full of pasta and red sauce. He could smell it vaguely – Parmesan and Romano cheese, garlic, tomatoes, peppers – and it made his stomach grumble.

“Yeah. All about a minor drug bust. Nothing very exciting.” While paperwork was the worst part of being a cop, having to testify in court was probably second, as long as you didn’t count some of the general Human misery. A lot of testifying in court wasn’t as interesting as many procedural cops shows would have you believe. It was boring most times, lots of waiting to testify, and your testimony was often just reciting whatever you wrote on your initial report. It was a way to kill an entire day and hardly do anything at all, which could be good or bad, depending on various circumstances. Roan still had to testify occasionally, due to cases or stuff he did for the cat squad or Dennis Caldera, and it was never anything but dull and anti-climactic.

Roan held up the bowl of homemade ravioli. “Can I have some?”

“Sure. But are you sure you don’t want some toast or eggs or something?”

He shook his head as he searched Kevin’s cupboards for microwavable dishware. He found it, and wondered how come he was making himself so at home in another man’s house. Especially since he was such a dick to the guy. “No, this smells good. Umm, about yesterday -”

“Look, don’t sweat it. It was … I dunno. I’m sorry I forgot about Dylan being the main witness on the case. I don’t know how I did that.”

“Yeah, well … it could’ve escaped your mind. It’s not like we talk about it a lot. And, umm, about Parker -”

“Yeah, about him.” Kevin sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh, almost covered up by the thunk of his coffee mug. His back was to him, but Roan picked up the tension. He just ladled ravioli into the microwave safe bowl and waited for him to say whatever he was working up the courage to say. Finally, he said, “You were right. But since I have the feeling you always think that, you’re probably not surprised.”

He put the bowl in the microwave, and put a paper towel over it so the sauce didn’t splatter. “Right about what?”

“I, um … you’re going to make me say it, aren’t you? I hired him once.”

Roan felt his stomach twist in a nauseated way, even though he hadn’t popped his pills yet. “Oh Jesus, Kev …”

“Save me the speech, okay? It was years ago. I went up to Everett, way out of my jurisdiction, and I never told him I was a cop. I never expected to see him again, okay? That was the whole point. But then a couple months later he moved down to Seattle, and coincidentally into my beat area. Luckily he’s been cool about it all, he never threatened to expose me or anything. He didn’t care.”

Roan sat in a chair across the table from him, but Kevin was looking down at his coffee cup and wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Is he blackmailing you?”

Finally Kevin looked up at him, scowling in annoyance. ”No! Of course he isn’t! I just said he wasn’t like that.”

“But you’re taking a huge risk in letting him stay here.”

“I know. But he’s really trying to go straight – pun absolutely not intended – and he needed a place to go where he wouldn’t be tempted by his old lifestyle. Could you get more square than my house?”

“No. But … do you hire a lot of hookers?”

He gave him a hard stare. “Don’t you give me shit.”

“I’m not. I just want to understand what’s going on with you.”

“What’s going on with me?” He snorted derisively. “What I wanna know is, where’s all this anonymous gay sex going on? If the fundies have taught me anything, besides gays being the biggest threat to democracy the world has ever known, it’s that gay men are always having tons of anonymous, meaningless sex, usually in public restrooms and Boy Scout meetings. So why can’t I ever find any of this action? I’m lonely, okay? And I’m a chunky black cop. I’m not a big hit at clubs, which are usually twinkville anyways, and I can’t stand the vanity and posing. Ugh. I just wanna meet a guy, you know? A nice guy. They don’t have to be stunning, like your men, just someone who doesn’t mind having a cop boyfriend who likes quiet nights at home. Why is that so hard to find?”

Roan didn’t even know where to start. God, he really needed to take his pills. “So you’re hiring prostitutes to meet a guy? Have you tried e-dating?”

“No, I know I’m not gonna meet a guy hiring hookers, okay? I don’t do it that much, and I always feel shitty when I do. But I’m lonely, Roan. Yeah, I’ve tried dating services, but the ones that cater to us are usually concerned with just hooking up. Which, again, I wouldn’t mind, but guys aren’t exactly beating a path to my door.”

He scratched his head. “What was that comment about my men being stunning? You think I require that?”

“No, but it’d be weird if you didn’t get good looking men. You’re a hunk magnet. Prob’ly ’cause you ain’t exactly hard on the eyes, and you got that whole macho man thing goin’ on.”

“If you start singing the Village People, I will kick you.”

He smirked, idly stirring his coffee. The microwave beeped, letting Roan know he had a valid excuse to get up. “Come on, you know you have the macho thing. It’s half tortured action hero, half bad boy. And who doesn’t love either of those? C’mon.”

“I am not a bad boy! How am I a bad boy?”

“Wow, take your pick. But I’m gonna go with the fact that you are just incredibly fucking dangerous. You are a SWAT team all by yourself.”

“I’m not that bad,” he complained, aware he had made an accidental pun.

“I wouldn’t fuck with you.”

“My whole life has been an attempt to get people to stop with fucking with me.”

“Okay then, mission accomplished.”

“No, not really.” Roan got the steaming bowl of pasta from the microwave and after digging a fork out of a drawer, sat back down at the table. It smelled great, and the pomegranate blueberry juice didn’t taste that bad.

He was taking his first bite of ravioli when Kevin added, “Oh yeah, Dylan went and picked up Fox from the hospital last night, and when he came back, he asked me if I could do a records check on a guy named Pierce Hockney. He said he’s connected to this tainted burn thing.”

He mulled that over as he chewed. He’d told Dylan about Pierce, but he hadn’t said that much about him.”Was he gone a while?”

Kev had to think about that for a moment. “I guess so. Parker and I watched a couple of Breaking Bad episodes before he came back.”

“So, a couple of hours? Traffic couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Not at that time of night, no.”

Suddenly it struck him. “You were watching Breaking Bad with a meth addict?”

“Former meth addict. He’s been clean for two months.”

“Still, is that wise?”

“It’s a good show.”

“I know it’s a good show, I’m just saying it’s weird.”

“It is weird, I guess. But no, he’s not tempted by scenes of people using rock. Is that what you were wondering?”

“Kinda.”

Kevin shrugged. “It’s fiction. He can handle it.”

He nodded, not sure what to say. It did seem like the kind of irony that was either funny or sad. “This is really good,” he said, gesturing to the pasta.

Kev smiled faintly. “I’m a great cook. Look at what those guys are missing.” After a moment where he sipped his coffee, and Roan enjoyed another bite of pasta, Kev asked, “So what do you think Fox and Dylan were up to?”

“Knowing Holden? Investigating. He doesn’t like to be sidelined for too long, and I’m sure Dylan is worried about me.” Yeah, he only cried like a hysterical teenager at a Jonas Brothers concert, and took half a bottle of heavy duty painkillers – why would that make him worry? Jesus, he was a piece of work sometimes. He’d kick his own ass if he could.

“So you’re not worried that they have a thing?”

He laughed, and briefly choked on a piece of ravioli. As soon as he was able to swallow it and stop snickering, he said, “Oh hell no. Dyl is civil to Holden, but I know he doesn’t like him very much.”

“Why not?”

“Hard to say. I think mainly ’cause he really doesn’t get him, which I can understand. I think Holden likes being difficult to fathom.”

“All I know about Fox is he’s one of those clever bastards that you don’t want to turn your back on.”

“Yeah, that’s him.” He paused, long enough to consider whether or not he should ask, and figured what the fuck. “You and Parker aren’t involved, right?”

“No. I’m just helping him, that’s all.”

“Okay, just making sure.”

Kevin had to leave for a brief stop at work before court, so Roan was able to eat the rest of his inappropriate breakfast in general silence. Did it strike either of them as hypocritical that a vice cop was known to consort with prostitutes, or that he was allowing a notorious pill popper (Roan) into his house? Sure, but you’d be hard pressed to find a cop who was as pure as driven snow. Ideally, the sins were minor – and Roan couldn’t help but think theirs were (but he would, wouldn’t he?) – and you weren’t as corrupt as a politician, but that happened too.

Not that there weren’t honest, pure cops. There were tons of them. But Roan didn’t trust most of them. Everyone fucked up; everyone was a hypocrite to a certain degree. Those that insisted most vehemently that they weren’t and never were were  usually the biggest liars of them all.

After eating and taking his pills, he wandered back upstairs, still sleepy. It was only hunger and an overwhelming need to piss that got him up in the first place. That and nagging feelings of guilt.

Dylan was sleeping on his stomach, the blankets only covering him to his shoulder blades, one arm hanging down the side of the bed. It was funny to say someone had a good looking back, but damn, Dylan had a good looking back.

Roan took off his shirt and crawled back into bed, trying not to wake him up, but he then leaned over and kissed his shoulder blade. How could he help it? He was gorgeous, and far more than he deserved.

He snuggled up against him, Dylan muttering in his sleep and nestling against him too, and fell back asleep, trying not to think about how he crushed a skull.

He was dreaming of mud and blood, of running through a jungle of buildings and trees, when his cell phone ringing woke him up. He’d taken it out to check his messages, but lost his nerve. He wasn’t going to answer it, but he didn’t want to wake up Dylan, so he snatched it from the nightstand, and muttered a semi-intelligible, “What?”

“Well, ain’t you a ray of sunshine?” Doctor Rosenberg rasped.

With a sigh, he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve had a bad week. What’s gone wrong now?”

“Nothing that I know of. I just wanted to know if you’d made any headway on finding the asshole who created the fake lepidysine.”

“I’d call you if I had. All I’ve got are breadcrumbs. I don’t know if any of these things will lead anywhere. Is that it?”

She snorted bitterly. “You are a prickly bastard today. Well, maybe this’ll distract you. Your blood reacts differently to the fake lepidysine.”

He pondered that a moment, not sure what to say. “Um, how? What does that mean?”

“The first dose, it’ll react like any normal virus. Second dose, it barely reacts at all. It’s figured out it’s false, a hormone analog, and attacks it.”

He stared up at the stuccoed ceiling, which looked like dried cottage cheese. “What does that mean exactly?”

“Well, a couple things. You know this drug ain’t gonna kill you, right?”

“Of course,” he lied. No, he didn’t know that, but in retrospect, of course it wouldn’t. Most of the people died of rapid transformation induced shock (called, according to Dee, RTS), while the secondary cause of death was the drug basically turning brains to mush. He had such a drug immunity if his brains weren’t mush by now, they were never going to be mush, and if he was susceptible to RTS, he’d have been dead after his first partial change.

“Okay. The thing is, no other infected blood that we’ve tested reacts this way. If we dose a sample, and give a second dose, it reacts with the same intensity.”

“So my virus is smarter?”

“A simplistic way to put it, but yeah. It has an adaptive immune response, basically. Part of what makes you unique is the symbiotic nature of the virus and you.”

“Symbiotic?”

“It gives you things, and you give it things. In this case, it’s learned to mimic an immune response.”

Was that even possible? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to hear “It is for you, freak-o”. “Does this help us at all, or did you just want to clue me in on my freakishness?”

“It opens the door for finding an antidote.”

He felt a brief acid burn in his stomach. “An antidote to what?”

“The weapon, the fake lepidysine. If your virus can tell the difference, the others should be able to with proper tuning. We just need to isolate what your virus creates to negate the pseudo-hormone, and synthesize it for mass production.”

“That’ll take years.”

“Probably. But at least we know we have the option. And that you don’t have to worry about getting exposed to the drug.”

“I wasn’t worried.” He wasn’t; he didn’t know why. Maybe because he loved drugs too much to be afraid of them. “Do you think … do you think there’s a cure? Maybe somewhere in my blood?”

“You mean a cure for the virus?”

“Yeah.”

She was silent for a long time. He could hear static on the line, some kind of electrical interference that was probably in the lab itself. Finally, she said, “It’s doubtful, but now you have me curious. I wonder what would happen if your virus met the standard lion virus.”

“Are we hoping for Thunderdome here? Two virus enter, one virus leave?”

That made her snicker. “I don’t think so, although that’d be cool. I think the most we could hope for is full integration.”

“What, you mean like I have?”

“Yes. Rather than a destructive relationship between body and virus, people could live with the virus more harmoniously.”

He considered that, and tasted metal in his mouth, his heart starting to race. “And have a bunch of people who could shatter skulls with one punch? Fuck no. Forget I ever asked.”

“What? What in the sam hell are you talking about? You shattered someone’s skull?”

“Let’s just say there’s probably a good reason I’m one in six million and leave it at that, okay? Thanks for the call.”

“Don’t you dare hang -” she said, but he hung up the phone before she could finish the sentence.

So he was the potential savior of the cats. Was he equally the slaughterer of the Human race? He would be if somehow Rosenberg could work out how to fully integrate the virus for everyone. Normal Humans would have no chance against people like him.

Did it matter? Where were his loyalties? He’d never actually been purely Human, he’d always been a half breed. So why did he feel any tug of nostalgia towards the normals? They were the lucky ones. Or were they?

More sleep was impossible, so he got up and started looking through Dylan’s coat pockets, seeking any information he and Holden may have gathered on Hockney.

He was sure it was Holden’s idea, and he should be mad at him, but Holden was smart enough to know that potentially endangering Dylan would earn his wrath, so he’d look out for Dyl. Roan found a slip of paper with an address hastily scrawled on it, and the initials PH. Who else but Pierce Hockney? He lived in Federal Way, so it was a drive, but not as bad as it could have been. He changed into more appropriate clothes and took off, leaving Dylan a note on the nightstand, simply telling him “Thanks”. He’d have to decide what he was thanking him for.

It was a grey and miserable day, and a grey and miserable drive. KEXP wasn’t even playing anything good. He should have known then what he was in for.

Hockney’s house was an unassuming manufactured home at the end of a cul de sac, full of similar looking homes. The only reason his stood out at all was due to the fact that there weren’t many flowers, and there was no sign of kids. Others had a big wheel in the front yard, a basketball hoop off to one side, a wading pool,  riots of azaleas or rhododendrons, but he had nothing except the few mugo pines and junipers that the original landscapers must have put in. Not much of a homebody. Being single made things easier, as he didn’t have to worry about  dealing with someone’s wife or kids.

He was half way up the muddy lawn when he caught the scent of blood. “No,” he muttered under his breath. The door was shut, so he had to open it, but it was unlocked, and he used the sleeve of his coat to cover his hand so he didn’t leave fingerprints.

The idiot chatter of the television greeted him, stuck on a college basketball game (presumably a repeat, as he didn’t think anyone was playing a game right now). The man he presumed to be Hockney was sitting on his couch in a torn University of South Carolina t-shirt and stained underwear, his legs splayed and his head back as if he’d fallen asleep while watching the tube. Except he had a neat little red hole in the center of his forehead, like an empty third eye, and Roan could see the chunky reddish-brown splatter of blood and brain matter that had soaked into the carpet behind the sofa.

If this was Pierce, he’d been dead for hours, and had been killed in what appeared to be cold blooded execution style, by someone Pierce obviously wasn’t afraid of, or at least wasn’t when he should have been.

As he took out his phone to call 911, he was willing to bet he’d hit another dead end. No pun intended.

16 – Fame > Infamy

Honestly, Holden felt sorry Dylan.

Not that he’d ever admit that, it would probably piss him off (well, as much as a dedicated Buddhist could be pissed off at anyone). But he seemed too peace loving to be in Roan’s violent life, too dedicated to harmony to be attached to the bucket of chaos and crazy that was Roan. And he meant that as a compliment – good crazy was hard to find. Although sometimes you still needed a vacation from it.

And oh boy, did Dylan need a vacation. So did Roan, probably, but he couldn’t take a vacation from himself no matter how many pills he took, although that didn’t stop him from trying. Opposites did seem to attract sometimes, that was true, so that’s probably how he and Roan ended up together, Dylan being the peace Roan wanted to achieve, but it wouldn’t work. Roan was a romantic, despite how cynical he seemed (why else was he into serial monogamy?) and he would stick with this kid as long as he could, but he was going to burn him out. He wouldn’t mean to, he’d hate himself forever for hurting Dylan, but he would. It was impossible to stand on the sidelines of Roan’s car crash life and not get hit by flying debris. Dylan must have been something of a romantic himself since he stayed with him, and must have known how bad Roan was for him. But Dylan struck him as the stubborn type; he wouldn’t give up so easily, even when he should. It was a fitting epitaph.

Although he understood Roan’s angst on one level, on another he didn’t. Being Human was overrated; Humans were selfish, venal, and generally horrible to one another. His advice to Roan would simply be become the lion and stop worrying about it so much. Surround himself with loyalists who will make sure he doesn’t end up in a zoo, and embrace the big cat lifestyle. There wasn’t much to miss about humanity, or at least not as far as Holden could tell. He was pretty sure Roan would agree with him there. But …

It was probably the romantic thing again, holding him back. He still had to believe somewhere in his brain that Humans weren’t necessarily all that bad. Holden blamed Paris for that; if Paris hadn’t proved to be such a sexy firecracker, he wouldn’t be trying to hang on so desperately to a humanity that could only betray him.

Holden was aware this was his own cynicism showing. Also probably some wish fulfillment on his part, as he would love to be able to just turn into a big cat and be done with people forever, except as snacks. It wasn’t that he didn’t know he had a dark side, because of course he did; he’d been a street kid, and he did lots of things that could be considered unsavory, and for fuck’s sake, he was a hooker. But working with Roan had taught him many unflattering things about himself, had cued him into things he supposed he could have guessed, but hadn’t really known. He could kill, for instance, and it wouldn’t bother him much. Oh sure, those guys deserved it, so why would it bother him? But just the idea of it wasn’t pleasant. He was every sin his father preached against (while his father went ahead and committed others). Maybe that’s why he was kind of proud of it too.

He played good host, he offered Dylan a drink, but Dylan was content to be as stiff and fragile as a board doused in liquid nitrogen. So Holden left him there as he went into his bedroom to change. He wasn’t sure how to dress. Was he going to pretend to be Roan? Well, that would never work, for several reasons. The main one – the big one – was they didn’t look anything alike. They were both white guys, but that was pretty much where it ended; Roan was technically even paler than him, as he seemed to stay out of the sun as much as possible, and on top of that he was a redhead. Even their body shapes were incompatible – he had broader shoulders, he was healthy farm boy stock, while Roan was built more for speed. Maybe that was part of the reason why his reflexes were so good. (That and the fact that he was superhuman. More Human than Human?)

Still, Roan was a pretty simple wardrobe to grasp: weird t-shirt, jeans (never designer, never tight), and a funky coat. (Roan had no real fashion sense, except when it came to coats. He had great coats. It was like the one place where his true gayness came through, in his elegant, swoopy coats.) He thought he had a pretty nifty leather jacket, although his t-shirts probably weren’t as hip as Roan’s. Smutty, sure, but Roan rarely went for smutty. He sifted through his clean shirts, and finally found one with a giraffe on it (why a giraffe? Why not?) and it seemed funky enough to suit his purposes. He wasn’t going to be Roan, he couldn’t be Roan, but he could be a sort of analogue.

He went into the bathroom, mainly because he had to pee, but he found himself looking at himself in the mirror, which he had promised himself he wouldn’t do. But under the harsh fluorescents he got to see the hues spreading across his face, all the colors of the rainbow that a bruise or a contusion could mimic: purple, maroon, yellow, green, brown, even something akin to a low saturation blue. He scowled seeing it, but not because it marred his pretty face. His face had never been pretty; he had always been told he wasn’t beautiful, but was interesting all the same, which he supposed was some sort of odd compliment – not ugly, not pretty, but not plain. Neither Dylan with his dark eyed, swarthy handsomeness, or Roan with his strangely feline – damn it, it was – strikingness, but some sort of oddity out in his own orbit. Pluto to their Jupiter and Saturn, he supposed, something people argued over categorizing. No, he hated seeing it because it was like “Victim” was plastered all over his face, written on his forehead in blood and lipstick for all to see. He was not a victim, he was never a victim, no matter what was done to him, and it filled him with a sudden fury that made him long to start breaking things. But no, he had to collar it, stifle it, get it under control. Because if he lost control, didn’t they win?

Besides, he knew that he had done them all worse by sending Roan after them. He wasn’t an attack dog – sorry, lion, which was a million times better – but something about animal rage and Human logic combined promised you a weapon that few could deal with. In fact, it made him wonder anew if any of those internet conspiracy theories about the cat viruses were true. The most likely of all of them was some sort of genetic modification gone awry, but for what purpose? Gene therapy? Again, the most likely, but some people insisted the government (any government; didn’t really matter which one) were trying to find that new and improved soldier, like they did in every bad action film. Didn’t seem likely they’d look at the animal kingdom for that, certainly not the cat family (wouldn’t gorilla be better?) and yet, after seeing Roan in action, after hearing what he did to Garver and his fucking cop butt monkeys, he wondered if maybe someone had figured out the master plan after all. It was just so insane it was hard to believe. But he had some proof, didn’t he? Roan was a one man destruction squad. He didn’t want to be, he couldn’t always control it, but fuck if he didn’t bring that snuff house down. Holden hadn’t really needed to be there – all those men and all those guns still equaled a fight they couldn’t win and several messy deaths. The only thing Holden had to do was clean up the mess afterwards.

He noticed a look on his face, a sort of desperation, and he decided to use it. He couldn’t be Roan, he couldn’t even be an analogue, but a desperate infected? Yeah, he could play that. He made faces in the mirror until he found one he liked, and then mussed up his hair with a little mousse, trying to mimic the look of someone who hadn’t slept well for days.

He wondered if now, because his face was all messed up, he’d get a call back, and he smirked at the thought. Unbeknownst to anyone but Rocky, he’d actually auditioned for a part in a low budget horror flick some people were shooting up in the Cascades. Rocky was a friend of a friend of the casting director, and suggested Holden might be perfect for them. Seems they needed an actor who didn’t mind working for scale and didn’t mind potential nudity. If nudity bothered him, boy was he in the wrong profession.

Either the world was changing, or being friends with Rocky just meant they were more open than most. They knew he’d done some porn, and didn’t care. Gay porn? Didn’t care, even though he was reading for an ostensibly straight part. He thought the audition had gone extremely well; he made them laugh a couple of times (deliberately), and they said they’d call him back in a week or two. For more auditions, or had he gotten the job? Even Rocky hadn’t been sure, but he said that was a good sign.

Maybe this, combined with the beating, was some cosmic sign he should give up hustling and become an actor. It was just another form of whoring, with slightly less sex. He wondered if anyone in the local theater would hire him – “Hi, I’m in gay porn, and tonight, I will be Iago” – but he actually knew some people in the local theater scene. Hire him for Shakespeare, no, but some angst ridden, artsy fartsy modern piece? Probably, yeah, no problem. Now it was time to prove his acting chops in an alternate venue. If he could pass as a desperate infected, he’d consider that a good sign too.

When he came out, Dylan looked at him with unreadable dark eyes, and said, “You look like you’ve been preparing for a role.”

“Too phony?”

“No. I’m just getting that you’re not new to this.”

“Of course not. All I do is pretend. I probably wouldn’t know the real me if he came up to me in a bar and bought me a drink.” Even as he said that, he thought he might have given too much of himself away, but screw it. He could look at it as throwing Dylan a bone – poor Dylan, who never knew what to make of him.

You know, Roan did have a point with him. Dylan was the better self, the thing that both he and Roan could never achieve. Poor bastard. How did you end up that way? This was not a world for the better selves; it was not kind. What a terrible burden to live with.

Dylan was quiet, even after they got back in the car and started driving towards the Church. He was handsome; even his profile was a knockout, with his diamond cut chin and sleek jaw, now peppered with late day stubble. Roan did have an eye for beauty, you had to give him that. Finally, at a stoplight, Dylan spoke again. “Don’t you hurt?”

“Hmm?”

“You just got out of the hospital, and you still look pretty banged up. How many guys attacked you, anyways?”

“Two. Armed with clubs and tasers.”

Now he stared at him. “Cops? You were beaten by cops?”

“They had the accoutrement of cops. Doesn’t mean they were. You can’t believe everything you see.” Besides, how much did State Patrol really count as cops? More than a mall cop, sure, but less than a SWAT team member. They were somewhere in that squishy middle.

Dylan continued giving him a dubious look, but the light changed to green, and he was forced to look ahead. “Did you tell Roan this?”

“I told him nothing. I didn’t have to. He knows taser burns when he sees them.”

“Jesus.” He grimaced as if anguished, and sure he was – Dylan probably hurt for the world – before he shook his head. “Why the hell did they attack you?”

“Oh darling, that is a long and unpleasant story. Let’s just say I wouldn’t take a beating like a good for hire piece of meat should. Some men in power don’t like it when you get uppity.”

“Why do you do this to yourself? You don’t have to sell yourself.”

“That is debatable. But let’s agree to argue about that later, okay?” Actually, he skirted the issue, but he did kind of hurt. His whole face felt like a toothache. He’d been given some painkillers, but very few, and weak; Roan probably had better in his pocket. He could have asked, but fuck it, he had an emergency joint at home, and pot was usually a great painkiller. Also, it’d give him his appetite back, which was good. He knew he was hungry, but he’d had a hard time eating. Hospital food, maybe.

Dylan let it be for the moment, but finally asked, “Are you sure you can do this?”

“What, fake my way into a drug deal? Easy. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“Ah. That’s very kind of you. But I’m always happy to be someone I’m not.” This was true. Was it sad? He wasn’t sure. He had to admit that right now, he didn’t much care.

The Church was busy tonight, with lights burning in every window and no parking on the street. Holden could hear the thud of repetitive deep bass that usually accompanied club music coming from somewhere nearby. Dylan had to park down the street, in front of a house where no one was apparently home. “Must be one of those infected mixers that drives Roan crazy,” Holden noted, and then, after a moment, added, “You don’t have to go, you know.”

“Yeah, I do,” Dylan said, taking the keys out of the ignition and putting them in his coat pocket. “These are the people making Roan’s life hell. I want to meet them.”

Holden just stared at him, impressed by his profile even in the dark. “What did he do to deserve you?”

He almost scoffed, but it was too weak to be much of anything. “He has a magnetism about him, doesn’t he?”

“Animal magnetism?”

“I wasn’t going to say that. But Roan has said something about him having an unstable pheromone load now that he’s out of a viral cycle. He says that could be responsible for anyone being attracted to him ever.”

“Wow. So, does he hate himself ’cause he’s a lion, or does he hate the Human part of himself more?”

“I don’t know. How do you tell?”

“Ask?”

“And do you think I’d get a straight answer?”

“Good point.” With a sigh, he put his hand on the door handle. “So are you going to be you, or are you going to use an alias?”

“Just me. You?”

“Since I doubt Roan used his first name, being that he’s anathema to the Church, I’m just gonna be me.” With a grin, he said, “I’m a lion.”

“I don’t even know what I am. If they ask, I guess I’m a lion too.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Holden tried to sound optimistic, but Dylan was clearly at the end of his rope. Shit was getting to Roan, but it was getting to Dylan too. Everyone just needed a hug and possibly some Quaaludes, but hey, who was he to judge? It wasn’t like he’d ever been in a functional relationship where he wasn’t being paid to be there. It made life uncomplicated, which was nice, but it also made him the last person who should ever give relationship advice ever.

They walked to the Church in silence, and Holden took the lead, for no other reason than he was simply the point guard. He was the one trying to pass as an infected in need of burn. Dylan was just … well, he wasn’t sure. Since he was a Buddhist he probably wasn’t on a mission of vengeance, but who knows? Maybe he was. Just because he was Buddhist didn’t mean he couldn’t snap and lose it. He just wished he had a better idea of what he was going to do so he could back his play.

The Church was all dolled up tonight. There were little white lights framing the windows, and little blue ones overhanging the doorway. It occurred to him they were called “fairy lights” in Britain, and he almost laughed. He was wondering why they were so open considering their recent troubles, then he noticed the hulking figures in the thick shadows. Church security guards, so thick on the fringes they were almost a Human cordon. So it was open within reason, apparently, but there was a brace of rent a cops in case something looked really suspect. Holden wondered why he and Dylan weren’t challenged, but after thinking about it a moment, realized an obviously beaten guy and his pretty partner just didn’t seem like the anti-cat armed fundamentalist types. He bet the mousse he put in his hair helped too; it probably made him look pretty gay, or at the very least, metrosexual.

Once inside, all was light and throbbing noise, like a dance club, although the noise was leaking from another room. There was a long table on which there was an assortment of boxed cookies, crackers, some fruit, and some bottles of water. It was a coffee pot away from looking like the spread at an AA meeting. A Stepford robotic blonde woman greeted them with a creepy smile. “Hello, and welcome to the Church of the Divine Transformation.” Her fake smile faltered as she looked at Holden’s face. “Oh my, whatever happened to you?” There was a hulking man in the corner, probably Samoan, trying as unsuccessfully to blend into the wallpaper as his coat was unsuccessful in hiding the weapons stashed underneath. The Church seemed to be prepared for an armed siege.

Holden decided to play this belligerent. He had a chip on his shoulder now, and he was done with the world. Why else was he here? “What do you think happened? Normals, that’s what.”

“Oh my god,” she gasped, with some seriousness. “Would you like to talk to one of our counselors?”

“Thanks, but I’m done with talking to counselors.” Holden walked past, deeper into the house, and Dylan followed.

Eventually they discovered the ballroom (?) where the main party was taking place, a cavernous room made to seem that much larger by the fact that it was mostly shrouded in darkness, with all the lights isolated spots or bars of neon colors. From what Dylan told him, he was looking for a guy named Pierce, who was supposedly wearing a pale blue dress shirt and a dark blazer (dressed, in other words, like a chaperon or a narc). They split up, wandering to different parts of the room, while Holden struggled to recognize the music. It was generic club DJ stuff; it could have been anything. It probably was.

Holden eventually found his man standing near the northeastern part of the room. He was standing beside a table stocked with bottled water and Vitamin water or one of its equivalents, candy colored water in plastic bottles that probably tasted exactly like they looked. Pierce was an average looking man in a reasonably expensive looking blazer. He was one of those guys with such a severe widow’s peak that it looked like an arrow, the rest of his hair thinning around and behind it, making it look like his meager hair could have been painted on. It also made him look like he had more forehead than was advisable for anyone who wasn’t a Star Trek alien. His eyes were small and deep set, their color impossible to guess in this low level lighting, his mouth wide but fairly thin under a slightly Roman nose that dominated the otherwise weak features of his face. Did he look like a bird? Maybe. Hawkish. That was the only thing he could think of.

“Pierce?” he asked.

Surprise flashed through his eyes, making Holden wonder how his bruises looked under the black lights. “You the guy who called earlier?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“You a cop?”

“No. Do I look like a cop?”

He didn’t answer that. “You wearing a wire?”

Holden didn’t answer, just lifted up his shirt to reveal his naked stomach, which had a couple of lavender bruises on it as well. “Wanna see my dick?”

Pierce looked at him sharply. “What?”

“It’s how hookers weed out the cops. You ask to see their dick, and if they don’t whip it out, odds are they’re a cop.”

That looked like too much info for Pierce, he seemed slightly nauseated at the prospect. Ah, insecure straight boys, you had to love their squeamishness. Up close, Holden realized he was probably younger than he looked. Thanks to premature balding and a nebbishy build, he looked like he was in his mid-thirties from a distance, but up close you could tell you were probably about ten years off. The eyes gave it away. “No, I don’t wanna see your dick. How do you know that about hookers?”

“I know people in all the wrong places,” he said, letting his shirt drop. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the complete truth.

Pierce looked a little stunned by this. A drug lord he wasn’t. He was new at this whole thing, wasn’t he? And yet didn’t he have the Church locked up sales wise? Hmm. Either this guy was a stringer, not the head honcho after all, or he was the head honcho only because of nepotism: he knew someone here, he was a favorite of someone here, and that was enough. How was he going to find out which?

“Gonna hook a brother up or not?” Holden asked, trying not to laugh at his use of the word “brother”. Honestly, it should be illegal for a white person to use that term in a non-ironic manner, but he was playing the type who would say something like that and never see the irony in it.

Pierce – or whoever he was – seemed reluctant, but said, “Follow me.” He left the ballroom via a small door that was really hard to spot in the gloom, and Holden followed.

The door led to a narrow corridor, and Holden was sure it had some type of architectural name, but he couldn’t place it. Was it a servant’s access or something? “How much is a hit? And how do I take this stuff? Snort it, shoot it, smoke it, what?”

The guy paused, giving him a look that suggested he didn’t think he was quite for real. “You can take it lots of ways, but I got the liquid stuff.”

“Great. Like GHB?”

The guy reached in his blazer, and pulled out what looked an Altoids tin. Inside were a few small glass vials of clear liquid. “Thirty five,” he said.

Thirty five dollars? Not too bad. Maybe that was another reason so many infecteds took it. Holden pulled out a wrinkled twenty, ten, and five, and was careful to ball it up in his fist before handing it to Pierce (he was just going to think of him as Hawkeye, because there was no way he was Pierce), so money changed hands in a way not visible to any invisible observer. (But they were alone in the hall, so who were they trying to impress?) After taking the money surreptitiously, he gave Holden one of the vials and put the tin back in his pocket.

“What’s it taste like?”

Hawkeye scowled, his thick brows meeting in a vee over his nose. “I dunno. I don’t think it has a taste.”

“You’ve never tried it?”

“Yeah, but in juice. I didn’t taste it.”

Wrong. He’d never done it. He wasn’t a great liar, was he? Holden popped the cap off the vial and took a sniff, but smelled almost nothing besides a slight chemical smell. He wondered what Roan would think of this – would this blow his head off? Would he flinch like he sometimes did at smells that almost no one else noticed? He swigged the vial, and he could feel his mouth going numb, the drug spreading like ice through his bloodstream.

He smiled at Hawkeye, who was still too uncomfortably close to him in the narrow hallway, and grabbed him by the thinning hairs on the back of his head and kissed him, forcing his tongue between his lips and letting the drugs run from his mouth to Hawkeye’s.

He tried to push him away, but Holden had a firm grip on his hair and had pinned him up against the wall, and the guy was no heavyweight anyways. To keep him quiet and confused as the drugs kicked in, he very gently fondled his balls. Even if the guy was straight – and his hair seemed to indicate that – there were simply biological responses that couldn’t be suppressed. That was the wonderful thing about men: they were so simple.

When he sagged a bit under the weight of the burn, and he started getting obviously turned on, Holden broke away from him with a smile. “Wow, yeah, this shit is fantastic.” It was. He’d hardly done any at all, but his face no longer felt like one overwhelming bruise; he felt great.

Poor Hawkeye was desperately confused, his eyes glazing over with drugs, but he remembered to at least seem to be indignant. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Bobby told me it was like Ecstasy – you didn’t wanna do it alone.” Almost everybody knew a Bobby or a Mike; these were good names to use to just muck up the issue. Holden then leaned in, cradling his balls again, and whispered in his ear, “Why don’t we find someplace private, huh? Have our own party.”

“I’m not gay.” Weird how his voice broke when he said it. He was half turned on and half scared, and all stoned. Hard to think straight in those circumstances, pun very much intended.

“I’ve been told I could suck a bowling ball through a straw. Wanna find out?” About as subtle as a six foot dildo. But the thing was, gay, straight, or other, no man could resist the lure of a blow job. Well, okay, he bet Roan and Dylan, holier than thou guys that they were, probably could under certain circumstances, but not all the time.

After a very long moment, where he listened to the guy breathe, he finally said, “There are rooms upstairs.”

“Awesome. Lead the way.”

He let Hawkeye take the lead, and glanced at his wallet, which Holden had liberated from his blazer pocket. Not that he noticed; when your balls were getting a good cuddle, you never noticed anything else.

The hall lead out to a larger hallway, and there was a staircase that lead to the upper floors of the main house. He knew the place well enough that he had been here a lot, clearly, but was he an infected? For some reason, he doubted it.

Hawkeye found a small, unoccupied bedroom, and he was really tripping balls now. He was giggling in a truly disturbing schoolgirl sort of way, and said, “You can’t tell anybody I did this.”

“Did what? What do you wanna do?” Holden asked, mock seductively, and bodily pushed him down onto the bed, straddling him as Hawkeye now laughed more hysterically.

He struggled to say it for a good long minute before spitting out, “I don’t wanna do anything! I’m not gay.”

“Getting a blowjob doesn’t make you gay. Giving a blowjob … well, that’s another story.” He started undoing Hawkeye’s pants, and then stopped. “Hey, is there a freezer around here?”

He looked at him with dazed, barely comprehending eyes. If he was infected and this stuff was tainted, he’d probably start shifting any minute now. “Umm … downstairs. Why?”

”Cause I know this great trick with an ice cube. It feels so good you won’t believe it. Wait for me, tiger, I’ll be right back.” As he got up and went to the door, he paused long enough to look back and asked, “Should I grab a beer while I’m there?”

“If you can find one in this dump, yeah,” he agreed, still cackling giddily.

“Got it. Be back in a minute.”

Holden had already dropped the remainder of Hawkeye’s wallet on the floor. He only wanted one thing in it and he had it slipped in his jeans pocket, next to other thing he’d grabbed from Hawkeye’s jacket. Once he shut the door of the bedroom, he went back down the stairs and found his way outside the church, oblivious to Stepford blonde and her big Samoan bodyguard. (For a guy built like a Winnebago, he was kind of cute.)

The cool air outside was like a refreshing slap to the face. He took a few deep breaths on his walk back to the car. Dylan wasn’t there, and he decided to give him ten minutes before he called him and asked him to come out. He looked at Hawkeye’s ID – just as he thought, he wasn’t Pierce; his driver’s license said he was one Joseph Cullen (he knew it). Holden pulled out the other thing he lifted from Joe, his phone, and started looking through the menu. He found the number of Pierce in no time, and as soon as he determined this was the type of phone with internet capabilities, he began searching for a wi-fi signal. There was one here, but it was weak. He was doing a search when Dylan returned to the car.

“Guy show?” he asked.

“A proxy showed, guy named Cullen, but he never said that,” Holden said, tossing Joe’s ID into his lap.

Dylan looked at it curiously before he realized what Holden had done. “You picked his pocket?”

“If he wasn’t going to tell me the truth – and he wasn’t – how else was I supposed to find the truth?”

He must have figured out there was more wrong, as his eyes narrowed. “Please tell me that’s your phone.”

He didn’t answer, just showed him the tiny screen. “Pierce Hockney’s address. Our next stop.”

“He had his address on his phone?”

“No, he had his number. I used a reverse directory to find his address. Come on, Dyl, new technology is your friend. Keep up.”

He answered that with a glare. For a long moment he didn’t say anything, then finally asked, “You’re a menace to society, aren’t you?”

That just made him smile. “Why d’ya think Roan took me on as an assistant? Wasn’t ’cause of my typing skills.”

Once again, he had nothing, so after a moment’s consideration, he got his keys out and started the car.

He really didn’t belong in this world, did he? Poor, poor Dylan.