Epitaph, Part 9

9 – This City Is Killing Me

Although Roan braced himself, it wasn’t enough.

He knew it was going to be an assault on the senses, a cacophony not just in the aural sense but in the physical, olfactory, and visual sense. But he still wasn’t prepared for the volume of noise that greeted him, the multiple levels of digital and arcade noises combined with people talking – sometimes cheering, sometimes yelling – music, and noises of various machines that made his eardrums want to implode. The flashing lights and the smells of people and snack food and coffee made him want to start snarling and biting like a rabid animal.

He kind of was. The lion was just too close to the surface right now, his anger was too overwhelming, and Roan felt like he was walking a sword’s edge right now. It was an effort of will to keep the lion from snapping at the first person to accidentally bump him.

The smells were just making things worse. He hadn’t expected so many so concentrated, so intent on assaulting his sinuses. He had to pause, close his eyes, and concentrate on filtering them out one by one. After several deep breaths, he was able to catalog the main scents and shove them aside. For some reason, possibly psychosomatic, he found it easy to ignore even prevalent smells that he first studied and acknowledged.

As soon as he was sure he wasn’t going to lose it, he opened his eyes to the crowd, and found a random kid staring at him from across the vast gaming floor. He tugged on the sleeve of the guy next to him, and Roan had a sinking feeling he recognized him, so Roan quickly turned away and looked around.

Game World was unreasonably huge. There was a wide transparent staircase leading up to a second level, and there were many more people here than he expected. Wasn’t it a school day? Of course, the general ages of the men here ranged from about thirteen to thirty, and it was probably about ninety percent men in here right now. He knew gay clubs that couldn’t manage this level of sexual segregation.

What was he looking for? It occurred to him he had no actual idea what he was doing. Anger had brought him here, but it had also abandoned him, and now all he had was rage and nothing to do with it. Still, it was the only active lead he had right now. When the cacophony started to make him dizzy, Roan decided to head up to the second level, if only to have a better view of the place.

As leads went, this was weak anyways. They “may” have hung out here. At times. So tenuous as to be insane. But he felt insane right now, and the fact that he was still growling made people clear a path for him on the crowded steps, so there was something to be said for insanity.

Roan stood leaning on the clear blue acrylic railings, looking down at the ground floor level of Game World, as he adapted to the noise, smell, and visual flares. This place probably made a buttload of cash daily, and why? Maybe it was generational. He just never got video games. Oh, he played a few as a teen, but even then it was mostly out of a sheer lack of anything else to do. He knew the technology and sophistication had changed a great deal between then and now, and some were probably pretty amazing, but he never really had the time or the impetus to try them. Although, once when he pointed that out to Dee, Dee had replied, “That’s ‘cause you can do some video game style shit in real life. It’s not as fun if you can actually run up walls and rip people’s arms off.” At the time, Roan had protested he couldn’t do any of those things, but … yeah, he’d almost torn a couple of different guys’ arms off, and probably could have torn them all the way off if he hadn’t stopped himself. He had yet to ask Rosenberg how he got that strong, but Roan already knew. Adrenaline spike combined with his muscles and tendons warping as they changed from human to lion gave him transient freak strength. It was the same strength that broke his bones on the way to changing him to a lion form. If it could hurt him, it could hurt other people. It was the viruses natural violent tendency, only directed outward. He wasn’t so much The Hulk as some large viral infection briefly given human form.

Roan lost track of time standing there, looking down at the people far below, wondering how he was supposed to tell one white teenage boy from another. And odds were good they were white male, as the Church was overwhelmingly white, and most of your violent vandals were male. Right now, Game World looked to be about eighty percent white, with Asians being the second biggest group. It was kind of a cliché, and yet, there it was.

It was a surprisingly large drop, at least a story, and while he had a good view of the top of people’s heads, he was no closer to finding anything. He became aware he was holding the railing too tight, and while he loosened his grip, he closed his eyes and tried to utilize the meditation techniques Dylan had taught him. Roan concentrated on his breathing, listening to it, focusing on it, trying to use its rhythm to calm himself down.

In this moment of peace and silence, he pictured Paris, sitting at their breakfast bar, staring at him. “Are you fucking nuts?” he imagined Paris saying to him. “How does this help? Where are you going from here?” All valid questions, and he couldn’t answer a single one of them.

When he opened his eyes, he looked up at the only available clock, which was designed to look like a digital countdown clock. Had he really lost twenty minutes? Holy shit, had he meditated or actually fallen asleep on his feet?

Roan realized he was hungry, tired, and sore. All his joints ached, and it felt like all his teeth were going to fall out. No one was looking at him, and he wondered why. No wonder finding a decent witness was damn near impossible.

It was when he turned that he caught the scent of blood.

Roan was willing to believe it was his imagination, but somehow he caught a trace of Paris’s blood in the air. How he found it in the miasma of smells was honestly impossible, he wanted to believe it was psychosomatic, but Paris’s blood was like a neon sign in the dark, an arrow pointing downward. Suddenly alert, on edge, pain sliding into the background as the lion surged forward, Roan’s eyes scoured Game World, searching for the person who had Paris’s blood on them.

Easier said than done. There were so many people, and the smell was so faint. He hated to let the lion take point, but his instinct was going to find the person before anything else, so he took a mental step back, not letting the lion take over so much as briefly have a crack at the wheel, to mix his metaphors beyond all reason.

Roan could tell the difference, though. His eyesight genuinely shifted, the people on the stairs and below him suddenly crystal clear, like someone had switched the view from regular to high definition, and more smells joined the general stew, but these were smells he should never have been able to pick up over the scents of deodorants, perfumes, and colognes: emotions, mostly between general happiness and specific frustration. His eyes fell on two young men at the base of the stairs, just coming up, unremarkable in just about every aspect. One had brown hair, the other blackish- brown hair, and they could have been brothers save for the fact that they looked about the same age.

They were talking and joking, but when they looked up and met his eyes, their eyes grew big, and Roan could smell their fear even from here. They knew who he was and why he was here. Guilt was written on their faces, as naked as the scent of Paris’s blood.

They spun and scrambled down the stairs, shoving people out of the way, running for the door like their asses were on fie. There were too many people on the stairs, shoving them out of the way would slow him down, so the lion didn’t hesitate. It grabbed the railing and jumped over it, and Roan was aware of people shouting and gasping in horror, even after he landed on his feet and kept running.

The boys were smart. They didn’t look back, they just kept running, slamming out the glass doors and shoving people out of the way as they fled across the street. He heard the screech of brakes and the honks of car horns as they were almost run over, but the boys didn’t stop. They had the devil on their tail, and nothing was worse than being caught by him.

Roan was trying to hang on even as the lion kept running, vaulting over parked cars and into the street, where he jumped over moving cars like they were standing still, feet barely touching the pavement before he hopped over the hood of another speeding car, hand slapping the car before he was over on the other side, still running.

The boys had a lead that was quickly dwindling, and they scrambled into a car on the neighboring block just as he rounded the corner, dodging and slipping past people like they were stationary trees in a forest. He was not losing his prey so easily.

The car pulled away from the curb, and Roan had enough control to make the lion dart out into the middle of the street. If the boys wanted to continue, they’d have to run him down.

There was no hesitation on their part. The brown haired boy was driving, and he hit the gas, intending to either scare Roan or hit him.

Good.

Roan jumped forward, coming down on the hood of the car and grabbing the lip at the rear of the hood before driving his fist into the windshield. They hit the breaks hard, tires screaming on the asphalt, but Roan’s grip was supernatural and wouldn’t be shaken even by physics as the windshield spiderwebbed around the hole made by his fist. It was safety glass, it wouldn’t shatter that easily, but he was counting on that, as he grabbed the inside of the windshield and yanked it out as a whole piece, throwing it away.

Suddenly exposed, the smell of their fear was overwhelming, as was the scent of blood. They’d spilled some in their car. They attempted to get out of the car, but Roan leaned in and grasped them both by their throats. “Attempt to leave, and I’ll kill you both,” he growled, his voice full of broken glass. His vocal chords had already started to change shape, and it was hard to talk.

They both sat very still and ramrod straight in their car seats, staring at him in wide eyed horror. Their fear was intoxicating, and it was taking every ounce of will he had not to rip out their throats and feel their sticky, warm blood wash over his face. He let them go, and they didn‘t move, because they were too scared to do anything. “W-we d-didn’t know -” the driver stuttered, finding it rather difficult to spit out words as well. “You’re for real. You are -”

Roan had no interest in hearing what he really was. “Where’s Paris’s blood?”

The driver goggled at him. Roan could almost count all the capillaries in his wide blue eyes. “What?”

“The tiger blood. I smell it on you.” Roan was peripherally aware of people gathering on the sidewalks on both sides of the street, gawking and talking, while cars behind them stopped honking and were now driving around them, also turning back to stare at the car with no windshield and a guy crouched on the hood, half in and half out of the car. And yet none of these gawkers knew that that wasn’t the strangest thing. “Where is it?”

The darker haired one was crying he was so scared, and the driver was too, although in a quieter, less showy manner. “We don’t have it. I don’t -”

“You had it and spilled it in your fucking car!” he snapped, and it almost became a roar at the end, but Roan managed to keep it down to a fearsome snarl. He grabbed the steering wheel, mainly to stabilize himself, but it wasn’t long before he heard an odd noise, which was the steering wheel starting to creak under the strain of his grip. Even with broken fingers, he was strong enough to rip it off.

“We don’t have it!” the driver shouted, terror making his voice go up an octave. “Jonathan has it! We didn’t want to mess around with it!”

“Jonathan who? Give me a name!”

“Jonathan Dyer!” The darker haired one sobbed. “It was his idea, his brother worked at the university hospital, please oh god don’t kill us!”

A police siren whooped once, a noise that threatened to break his eardrums, but it shocked him enough to make him reassert control over himself. He glanced at the undercover cop car pulling parallel to them, and wasn’t surprised to see Seb get out of the passenger side. “We’re gonna need a code for you,” Seb said. “A special “Roan’s causing havoc downtown” code. What the hell’s going on?”

“They reek of Paris’s blood. They stole it. Luminol the back seat.”

Although both boys looked at Seb in silent appeal for help, they didn’t move. Seb did studying them for a moment, and then said, “All I smell is piss.”

“I seem to have that effect on people,” Roan admitted.

Seb snorted a laugh. “Speaking of which, where’s the windshield?”

“I got rid of it.”

“I figured that.” Seb opened the driver’s side door, and said, “Come on, kiddo. You have the right to remain silent, yadda yadda yadda -”

“What?” the driver exclaimed, finally looking at Seb. “You can’t! I mean, like, just ‘cause he says we did something doesn’t mean we did.”

“Yes it does,” Seb replied, grabbing his arm and helping him out of the car. “Legally, he’s a bloodhound. If he says you smell like something, that’s probable cause. And I have a feeling if we black light the backseat, we’re gonna find some fascinating shit.”

Driver had regained some of his dignity, possibly because there were actual humans here, and it looked like he was going to live. “My dad’s a lawyer. You can’t just -”

“They also tried to run me down,” Roan interrupted, and pointed back over his shoulder. “Check the D.O.T. footage from the intersection.”

“Ah, that explains why you’re on the car.”

“I wasn’t hitchhiking.”

“What?” the driver exclaimed. “He chased us! He was like a – a crazy person! He was growling!”

“Shut up, Chad,” the passenger said wearily, as Seb’s current partner helped him out of the car. Roan didn’t recognize this cop, a tall, big boned blonde woman with a Kara Thrace haircut.

“No! We’re not gonna be railroaded by this fr -” Seb slammed Chad chest first against the car, knocking the wind out of him, as he slipped zip ties around his wrists.

“You’re friend’s right, Chad,” Seb advised him. “You should really shut up.”

The dizziness washed over Roan like a tidal wave crashing and breaking over his head. The lion’s hold on him was relinquished, and all that was left was pain and his metabolism in freefall. His stomach was tying itself in knots, his joints felt like they were on fire, and he was suddenly light headed, like his brain had been scooped out and his skull filled with helium. He sat down on the hood of the car, no longer crouching, and trying to will himself to not pass out.

Seb had already loaded Chad into the back of his car, and the budget Kara Thrace was doing the same to the passenger, whom Roan already knew was going to cave and admit everything. Chad could be as indignant as he wanted to be, but his friend was done with it. Roan had scared him a bit too much to care anymore. That gave him a limited amount of time to find Jonathan Dyer before the police did.

Seb must have seen how bad he was, because he came over, and said in a quiet voice, “Ambulance is en route. Think you can make it?”

“I haven’t eaten today,” he said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t.

Seb looked around, and in the same whisper, asked, “How bad was it this time?”

Roan found that a difficult question to process for a bit, until he realized Seb was asking how much of his true nature did he expose to other people. It was all a blur now, but in retrospect, that hop scotching over moving cars was fucking nuts. What was he, Frogger? The lion had great reflexes, and a very specific tunnel vision when it came to prey. “Um, there may have been a little parkour.”

Seb sighed heavily and closed his eyes, as if Roan had given him an instant headache. “That’s toning it down in your book is it?”

“I wasn’t letting them get away.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

The ambulance rig pulled up, and Roan was both glad and regretful that Dee popped out of the vehicle, carrying his huge tackle box of a medical kit. “I’m gonna put you on a leash, you keep this shit up,” Dee warned, letting the kit thunk on the car hood.

“I was just thinkin’ that,” Seb told him.

Dee took Roan’s face in his hands, and stared at him intently. “You gonna pass out on me?”

“Probably,” Roan admitted. No sense lying now. “Haven’t eaten today. I’m totally empty and clean.”

By the way Dee’s eyes went wide, he knew he was saying he hadn’t any pills. “None?”

“Nope.”

“Shit.” He started digging through his kit as Shep came over, having pulled on his latex gloves, and started examining Roan’s right hand, the one he punched out the windshield with. He was very gentle handling his hand, looking over the cuts and strange deformations like he was examining a scared kitten.

“Do I need to tell you your hand’s broken?” Shep asked, as Dee quickly swabbed a spot on his arm and stuck Roan with a needle.

“No.”

In the time it took for Dee to return to the ambulance, get something, and come back, the painkiller he gave him was starting to work. It made the edges of the world soft and fuzzy, and Roan felt like he could breathe without inhaling broken glass. Dee gave him a Snickers, which is what he’d retrieved from the rig. Roan gave a nod of thanks, ripped the wrapper off, and ate it in three bites, hoping the sugar rush would keep his stomach happy and busy until he could get some real food.

Dee continued to stare at him in his judgmental, concerned way, and finally said, “You know you’re killing yourself, right?”

The painkillers had kicked in enough that Roan could shrug without making himself scream. “We’ve all gotta die sometime.” And if he had to die to keep these stupid assholes from killing more people with Paris’s blood, that was a tradeoff he was happy to make.