In the car, Holden was treated to the story of Mandy and her internet boyfriend in a meandering, compulsive bout of verbal diarrhea that made him want to pull over and put her in the trunk.

It turned out internet boyfriend was “like, fat and old” (thirty), and she was pretty disgusted by him, so she took off for the Church the first chance she got. Holden had to repress the urge to gasp dramatically, and proclaim, “Someone lied? On the internet? The police must be informed!” But he didn’t, because she might think he was serious.

Anyways, she found some people at the Church who allowed her to crash at their place, and that brought them up to date. She didn’t know if she was infected or not, but she kind of “hoped so”, and she had hoped to get in on that whole tiger thing, but she never met the right people, and besides, “some kinda shithead kitty fag guy ruined it all”. Holden winced, because she was talking about Roan, and he knew damn well what was coming.

Scott turned to look back at her, and said, “Not only is he a friend of mine, but he’s the guy we work for, so shut your ignorant mouth.”

She snorted, crossing her arms over chest. “He’s a fucking traitor.”

“Say it to his face. If he doesn’t rip your arm off, I will.”

“Do me a favor,” Holden interjected, before it could get really ugly. “Explain to me how he’s a traitor when he wants to keep people from dying horribly.”

“’Cause being infected’s fucking awesome,” she explained, with the aggressively bored tone of someone who honestly can’t believe anyone could possibly be as stupid as the person she was talking to. “You become something else! A big cat! That’s fucking cool.”

Holden shook his head. “You’re an idiot.”

“Fuck you, old man.”

“Before you came here, did you know a single infected person?”

“Duh.”

“Online doesn’t count.”

She shifted in her seat, arms tightening even more across her chest. Her lips twisted, but she didn’t allow herself to frown. “Are you infected?” she finally asked.

“No. But that kitty fag is, and I’ve known him for a while. He’d tell you what a fucking joke it all is.”

She shot him an evil look in the rearview mirror, but Holden found it easy to ignore. Just like he found her misguided and deeply stupid beliefs easy to understand as well. He was the son of a preacher, after all, and he knew how powerful denial could be. It could trump reality, and the more outrageous the belief, the more reality was helpless against it. You would have thought that shouldn’t have been true, but there was no end to which a person would push themselves to avoid facing life as it actually was. Life sucked; any belief, no matter how outrageous, was better.

Scott was lecturing her, but he tuned it out. There was no talking Mandy out of her stupidity, and besides, their job was done. They found Mandy. Sure, she’d probably run away from her mother again, possibly before they even reached Sea-Tac, but who cared? They were just hired to find her once.

He’d be glad to get rid of them both. They could go home and be idiots there. There were enough idiots here as it was. A whole city full of them.

****

Roan had a change of heart, and asked Dylan if he minded going home for lunch instead, and he had no problem with the alteration. They picked up some Vietnamese food to go and returned to eat at the breakfast nook and discuss plans. Not that there was much to discuss. Roan just told Dylan what Doctor Rosenberg had told him, about the apartment and what she wanted to do. Dylan’s reaction was the same as his, wondering about the déjà vu of it all.

Dyl all but refused to make the decision for him, since he felt it was Roan’s decision to make. But he just didn’t know what to do anymore. Dylan asked him if he knew what he didn’t want to do, a work around that was cheap, obvious, and helpful. He didn’t want the lion to ever hurt Dylan; he’d never forgive himself if that happened. So Roan thought maybe he could try the monitored apartment for a week. He’d be back here as much as he could during the day, but that would be it. Dylan wasn’t as worried about the lion coming out as Roan was, but he got the sense this was Dyl being Zen – read: fatalistic – about it all. Roan understood it, but didn’t like it.

They had just finished lunch when there was a knock on the door, which caused them to exchange a wary look. “Did we lock the gate?” Roan asked. Suddenly he couldn’t remember if he had or hadn’t. Dylan shrugged, indicating he couldn’t remember either. Goddamn it. It had been a long day – week, year, decade, millennium – so perhaps they could be forgiven an occasional lapse.

Roan went to the door, actually kind of hoping for a fight, as there was nothing complicated in violence. He knew he could handle it. But a glance through the door’s peephole told him a different kind of fight was on the way.

He almost didn’t open the door, but then he figured fuck it, and undid the locks as aggressively as he could before throwing open the door. “What?”

Agent Monica Flores barely raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s a nice greeting.”

“What the hell are you doing at my house?”

“You’ve been blocking my calls.”

“Which would indicate I don’t want to talk to you, so why are you here?”

She remained stoic and unflappable in the face of his obvious hostility, which just made him more pissed off. She had a manila envelope under her arm, which she pulled out and handed to him. “We’re not enemies, McKichan. I wish you’d stop treating me as such.”

“What is this, a subpoena?” he asked, opening the envelope and looking at the contents. There was an impressive collection of paper, and Roan recognized the top sheets were standard background check forms. All concerning him. “What the fuck is this? You’ve been checking up on me?”

“It’s standard procedure,” she said, tapping a piece of paper near the bottom. He scanned the rest of the pages before he came to what she had been indicating, which was a security clearance badge. It had his name on it, but the photo was missing.

He looked at her in disbelief. Was this an elaborate practical joke? He could see Dee doing this, he really could. Maybe Grey if he was really bored. “Why are you fucking with me? You know I’m just out of the hospital, right?”

“What’s going on?” Dylan asked. Roan sensed him behind him, and he knew Flores made eye contact with him, but from the way her expression remained neutral, he knew Dylan didn’t nod or acknowledge her in any way. He was waiting to see if she was friend or foe.

“Crimes against infecteds and by infecteds are up across the country,” Flores said, as if that explained anything. “We could use a consultant with genuine field experience, and experience being an infected. Even if you are an … unusual one. But, worse case scenario, at least we have a consultant who could fight a tiger with their bare hands.”

“No,” Roan said, trying to hand the papers back. “You can’t conscript me.”

But she didn’t take them, crossing her arms over her chest to indicate she wasn’t going to take them any time soon. “Think about it. The fact that we’re even thinking about this should give you a good idea how desperate we are. My number’s on there if you want to call.” She gave Dylan a polite nod and turned and stalked away.

“I already made up my mind!” he shouted after her, but she ignored him. Of course she did. She was just paying him back for his aggressive ignoring of her. He slammed the door like a drama queen, aware that she couldn’t give a shit, and it hardly made him feel better.

“What the hell is this about?” Dylan asked, starting to sound a little peeved. “Ro?”

He hastily flipped through the sheaf of papers. There were legal forms in here, rules of conduct, stuff he absolutely had to get Dennis to go over. There was no way they could force the issue, was there? “The F.B.I. want to bring me in as a consultant on infected cases.”

Dylan seemed quiet for a long time, so Roan glanced at him from the corner of his eye, and saw his jaw had unhinged slightly. He was staring at him in slack jawed disbelief. Finally, he said, “The F.B.I.? As in the feds?”

He nodded, still disbelieving all of this. It had to be a joke. Flores was doing this to needle him. “Yeah. Flores has made me a personal project. I think she’s bored.” And on to his more than human status, but Dylan didn’t need to worry about that as well.

Dylan put a hand on his arm, squeezing gently, just enough to get his attention. “Hon, is this bad news or good news?”

Roan shook his head and shrugged. Not sure what to tell him. “Pick one. All I know is it’s trouble.” And this was just what he needed more of right now.

Damn it. If he ever needed proof the universe was out to fuck with him, he had it now.

Some people ducked instinctively, right along with Holden, while someone else asked, “Who’s shooting off fireworks?”

They sounded similar, but once you were actually shot at, it was easy to tell the difference between sounds. Firecrackers had an open sound, while there was something muffled about gunshots, something flat. He could ask Roan why that was, he just might know, but honestly Holden didn’t care that much.

People were fleeing into the kitchen as Holden was leaving, so he had to fight the tide, and once he made it to the living room all was chaos. At least the shots seemed confined to the outside, for the moment. “Out the back!” someone was shouting. “Out the kitchen door!” It took Holden a moment to recognize the voice, maybe because it was so authoritative and butch, but it was Scott, deploying his captain’s voice. And it was working, judging from the number of people headed that way.

Holden used the sound to track him, and found him crouched down in a spot between the end of the couch and the fireplace, holding a girl crouching beside him by the arm. Her hair was a cotton candy colored pink shot through with astonishingly ugly swamp green streaks, unattractive by any measure, but the profile was definitely Mandy’s. She looked a little annoyed that Scott had her by the arm, but she was not only ducked down beside him, but seemed like she was trying to worm her way behind him so she could use him as a human shield. Smart, since he probably would be an adequate shield, despite his general slenderness.

Holden crouched down beside them, and Mandy gave him a surprisingly snotty look. What, she wanted Scott all to herself? Tough titties. “Are you okay?”

Scott nodded, looking off towards the door like he expected the gunmen to come storming in. “Yeah. I think all the shooting’s out front.”

“Who the fuck are you guys?” Mandy demanded. “And let me go, fuckhead.”

“I’m Scott, and he’s Holden,” Scott told her. “We were hired by your mother to find you.”

“You were not,” she snapped.

“Afraid so,” Holden told her. “I’m a private investigator.”

She made a show of looking him up and down, even though he wasn’t standing, and snorted through her nose in that snotty teenage girls way, that seemed to say you weren’t anything without saying a single word. She then looked at Scott, and said. “Ain’t no fucking way you’re a private investigator.”

“Nope, I’m a hockey player,” he agreed.

It was worth it for the look of utter bafflement on her face. “What?”

Outside, someone was heard to scream “Kitty fuckers!” (there were other things, far less coherent), and Holden guessed this was a drive by shooting by the cat hater contingent. The squealing of car tires and a second volley of gunshots seem to confirm this. Scott looked at Holden, and asked, “Hate crime?”

He nodded. “Sounds like it.”

The sound of the car tires screeching into the distance quickly took over from the gunshots, and the shooting stopped, which was a relief. No one knew better than Holden that he was going to die, but he didn’t want to die at a shitty house party. Better to be killed by a crazed client than that.

“Would you let me go already?” Mandy complained, trying to yank her arm out of Scott’s grasp. No dice, a he had a grip like a vice, which Holden knew from experience.

“Not until you agree to come with us.”

“Oh, so you’re kidnapping me?”

Holden pulled out his cell phone, and called up her mother’s cell phone number on his screen before showing it to Mandy. “Would you like to ask your mom if we’re legit?”

She scowled, giving him a surprisingly mature and sour look. “No.”

“Great.” He tucked the phone back in his pocket, and said, “So, out the back everybody?”

Scott’s eyes narrowed as he studied him. “Shouldn’t we help?”

“And talk to the cops again? We’ll just get in the way. C’mon, let’s go.” Holden didn’t want to have to point out that if the press got wind of the Captain of the Falcons being at an infected house party, his hockey career was done. He probably couldn’t even be shunted to the coach track. He’d be more or less a leper, untouchable, associating with a fringe group even worse than the gays. Now Scott clearly was a danger seeker, he got a high from the thrill, but this would be suicide. There’d be no coming back from this. For Scott’s own good, he was going to have the force the issue and make Scott leave, no matter how much he wanted to be Canadian and help.

He seemed reluctant, but once Holden stood up and headed back towards the kitchen, he knew Scott would follow. He did, with Mandy complaining all the way. So, she was just like her mother?

Awesome. This was going to be a fun drive home.

****

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise, but confronted with all this new information, Roan found himself wanting to get totally wasted.

But he had to think clearly, at least for the moment, so he tried to distract himself. He was packing up to leave, wondering how he was going to approach this with Dylan. He was going to tell him, and ask him what he thought he should do. To be honest, Roan felt lost at sea here. What was the right move? Was there one? Would it matter either way? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he knew anything anymore, beyond the fact that if both he and the lion/virus fought for control of his body, they’d both ultimately lose. But how did you negotiate with a lion? How could he even begin to explain this to a virus?

It was while he was trying to find something else to think about beyond how fucked he was that he remembered the case he was supposed to be working on for Dee, his dead ex. Since he was at a hospital, he decided to ask around, see if anyone here happened to know Ben. No, it wasn’t Mercy, but Dee had taught him the medical personnel network was pretty well connected. There was an off chance someone knew him, and it gave him a good excuse for being out of his room and looking for all the world like he was leaving, which he was. The first eight nurses he asked hadn’t heard of the guy, but he got lucky with number nine, a heavy set, chatty woman who was reasonably sure that Ben was once the boyfriend of a nurse currently on surgical rotation. She even told him when the guy, Brent, was coming in, so he could talk to him as soon as he showed up.

It was obvious right away that Ben had had a type, as Brent was like Dee in the sense that he was mixed race with a dark complexion, as well as willowy of build with delicate facial features. Brent wasn’t quite as immediately riveting as Dee was, but Roan could see the attraction. He didn’t seem to be in a mood to talk, but since he wanted more time to drink his latte, he did.

It seems Brent had much the same relationship with Ben that Dee did. It was casual, trending towards occasional fuck buddy, and he hadn’t seen him for about a month. But he’d heard from him, as he’d texted him and occasionally sent him a personal message on Facebook. Brent was shocked about Ben’s suicide, but thought it might be related to the ex who gave him the clap.

This was new.

It seems Ben had hooked up with an ex who was rolling through town (Brent only knew him as Dan), and soon after thought maybe Dan had given him something, so he asked a friend at Mercy to do an STD panel on him. Roan asked why he hadn’t heard about this from anyone, and Brent said as far as he knew, Ben only told him because he wanted to talk to someone and he knew he could keep a secret. Roan wondered why that was, but didn’t ask, because it was irrelevant. Brent wasn’t sure of the lab tech’s name, although when pressed he admitted it could have been Sam. Brent had no idea about Ben’s diagnosis, because he never did call back and tell him. (Ben had self-diagnosed the clap.)

Roan was pretty sure he’d solved the mystery of Ben’s sudden suicide, but he had to make sure. When Dylan came to pick him up, he asked him if they could make a detour to Mercy Hospital. Dylan gave him that look, the one that said without words he was a crazy and possibly obsessive motherfucker who needed to be slapped back in a rubber room as soon as possible. But he also did it, with just a single labored sigh. At a long stoplight, Dylan turned to him and asked, “Didn’t you want to go to lunch so you could break something to me?”

“Yeah, but I think I figured out this case. So, let me do this, and we can get back to the depressing reality of things.”

“So a case is more important than me?”

Roan gazed at him, reaching over to give his thigh a comforting squeeze. “No, never. The case is more important than my fucked up shit.”

“Perhaps, but the fucked up shit never gets any better by ignoring it.”

“Exactly, which is why I need to put this case to bed.”

He was driving, so Roan only saw Dylan’s troubled frown in profile. “I’m not sure I followed that.”

“That’s okay, I’m not sure I did either. These meds ain’t bad.” That was one thing that Rosenberg told him before she left that he thought was both troubling and promising: the drugs may have kept the lion at bay. The lion never seemed to come out when he was on serious painkillers. So if he was constantly fucked up the lion would never come out? Hmm. It was an intriguing idea, and an easy solution. Perhaps too easy, which is why he didn’t completely trust it.

At Mercy, he identified himself as a private eye, looking into Ben’s death for “loved ones”. Because this implied family and not an ex-boyfriend, it opened some doors. The lab tech named Sam was a woman actually named Samuels, and Roan had to bribe her with a coffee before she’d talk to him.

Ben had been right about having the clap. But the initial test turned up he had been infected also, which Ben didn’t take well. She ran the test again, just to make sure since it was such a big deal, and the second test came back negative, indicating that he’d gotten a false positive the first time. But by the time she got that information, Ben was already dead. She felt wracked with guilt over it, because she felt it was her fault. He assured her it wasn’t, all the while wondering what would have happened if she just ran the second test and only bothered to inform him after it came through.

But that was dodging the main issue, which was the bastard should have waited to kill himself until the second test was done. Could he have been so stupid? So impatient?

Roan tried to imagine being that Martha Stewart worshiping, overly orderly guy, and how the thought of a life of infection might have hit him. He worked in medicine, he had to know the reality of this, of what it would mean, and maybe he assumed the worse. Would the thought of being infected be enough to drive him over the edge?

Yes, of course. Most people would be terrified to find themselves infected. You’d only wish it on your worst enemy, unless you were one of those delusional Church people or a stupid kid who thought being a tiger was cool. Even he had to admit to thoughts of suicide when he was younger, and he might have actually done it as a teen if he hadn’t embraced living to spite everyone else who wanted him gone. He always wanted to make an “it gets better” video to that effect. ‘No, it doesn’t really get better, you just get harder. But you want to stop suffering? Throw it back at them. Live to piss them off every day of your fucking life, by existing in their rarified orbit and refusing to be quiet about what and who you are. It could get you in any number of fights, but it feels good to make them hate you until they’re on the verge of a heart attack.’ It wouldn’t work for everyone, and there was a good chance his video would not only be removed, but magnetized and sent to internet hell. But living to annoy others worked for him.

Anyways, he didn’t think Ben was that type. Could it have really been so stark and so simple? He decided that no life was better than life as an infected? Why not? Many did. Just because Dee was enlightened didn’t mean all his exes were. And being enlightened while being uninfected was a different thing than being enlightened while being an infected. The difference between hearing a gunshot and getting shot.

When he came back to the car, Dylan, who’d been reading, put his book down as he saw the look on his face. “Bad news?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I don’t think Dee’s going to like the answer.”

Dylan tucked his paperback away in the glove box. “Was he ever going to? His ex boyfriend is dead. Nothing makes that better.”

Well, some things were all right in the universe. Dylan was being wise again, which meant things couldn’t be that bad. Or maybe he just wanted to enjoy a nice, normal moment before things stopped being normal for a while. His version of normal.

Oh, fuck it. No matter how Roan tried to sugarcoat it form himself, he’d never been in the same galaxy as normal, and it seemed to be getting farther away every passing day. It was just it used to be a good thing. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore.

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1427480.html

N.B.” For completists, this takes place just before Infected: Prey.

****

ROAN looked at the articulated skeleton on his office door with a frown. “No.”
Paris grinned, like he was making a joke. “You are such a stick in the mud. It’s cute!”
“We’re a detective agency. We don’t put skeletons on our doors or have bowls of candy on our desks,” Roan exclaimed, aware he was sounding just like an uptight asshole. Gods, shoot him now. “What kind of demented child would go trick or treating at an office park anyway?”
Paris plopped down behind his desk, where he had the new addition of a bowl full of assorted candy right next to his computer. There was a zombie hand sticking out of the center of the bowl too, in case someone missed the whole Halloween theme. Paris plucked a Tootsie Pop out of the bowl and peeled off the wrapper with practiced ease. “Okay, you may have a point. I bet Doctor Izakawa would just hand out toothbrushes and floss.”
Izakawa was the resident dentist of the office park where MK Investigations made its inexplicable home. “And you know Doctor Braunbeck is going to give out handfuls of his gorp.”
Paris snorted a laugh around his raspberry sucker. “See, there’s the reason kids will come here. They go crazy for gorp.”
“And what is Chandler going to give out? A fifteen percent off coupon for one will?” Chandler was the head guy at a law firm that was just a tad too classy to be called fly-by-night, but only just. They were probably one ambulance sprint away from being those guys who advertised on the local stations at three in the morning, asking if you’d ever been hurt in a car accident.
“See, now that might be a good deal. Wills are expensive, and a five year old has to plan for the future.”
Roan turned away before Paris could see that he had gotten a smile out of him. Paris had a way of wearing down his resistance, and he was doing it now. He had a good look at the skeleton, which was more goofy than frightening, and the fact that it had a paper feather boa only increased the silly quotient.
“You know,” Paris said. “You always said you loved Halloween.”
“I do! But….”
“But what?”
Roan sighed, his shoulders sagging as he turned back to face Paris. “But then I became a cop and I learned to hate it. It’s a holiday like any other holiday. Drunk assholes use it as an excuse to fuck shit up and be as irritating as possible.”
Paris grimaced slightly, giving him a sympathetic look. He was always too kind to Roan. “You’re not a cop anymore, hon.”
“I know. But the hatred lingers.”
Paris started sifting through his bowl of candy. “I bet I’ve got something to cheer you up.”
There was possibly a dirty joke there, but he decided not to make it. Instead, he decided to point out the obvious. “You bought that bowl of candy all for yourself, didn’t you?”
Paris nodded, the stick of the lollypop stuck in the corner of his mouth like the world’s  thinnest cigarette. “Yep. But I got stuff for you too. Look.” He pulled something out of the bowl and tossed it at him.
Roan caught at it and saw it was a tiny wrapped dark chocolate peppermint candy. He did like them, but he objected to the candy companies calling them “fun sized.” Fun for whom exactly? “Now you’re bribing me.”
Paris.s grin was brilliant and way too sexy. “Yep. And that’s not the end of the bribery.”
Roan ripped open the candy wrapper and popped the chocolate disc in his mouth. It was a little sweet; he genuinely preferred the British version of this candy, which was less sweet and more bitter, but he didn’t like to say it because it made him seem like a snobby, pretentious asshole. “Do I have to guess?”
Paris wrapped the sucker back up and put it down on his desk, which was honestly kind of gross. But then he stood up and sauntered over to Roan, a seductive grin curving his lips. “Nope.” He wrapped his arms around Roan and pulled him into a deep, surprising kiss. The raspberry Tootsie pop actually tasted pretty good combined with the chocolate mint.
Roan reluctantly pushed away from the kiss, his lips sticky with sugar. “You just want the night off,” he accused.
Paris smiled and nodded. “We should go home and have our own version of trick or treat.”
Roan was unable to hide his smile this time. “Is “trick” a pun?”
“Could be. You’ll have to come home with me to find out.”
Roan knew he was being manipulated by Par, who was brilliant at it, but he couldn’t really complain. He was going home with the sexiest guy in the world, who seemed to love him in spite of the fact that he was an uptight candy snob. “Fine, we’ll close up.”
Paris kissed him on the tip of his nose. “You won’t be sorry. I’m gonna make you love Halloween again, even if it kills me.”
Roan sort of doubted he’d ever love it again, but it would sure be damn fun to try.

Trick or Treat ©Copyright Andrea Speed, 2011

Roan knew it was a bad sign when he regained consciousness to find himself standing on a hospital bed, looking down at a puddle of blood on the floor. Actually, just coming to looking at a puddle of blood was bad enough on its own; the rest of this was just weird, bad touches.

He kind of knew what had happened even as his mind insisted on putting it together. His throat hurt, his mouth was tacky with blood, a thrown over IV stand with trailing tubes was on the other side of the room. His arm was hurting and bleeding from where the IV needles had been ripped out, muscles burning, joints aching like gravity was extra heavy today. His head was pounding like a kettle drum, and he was pretty sure he was about a minute away from throwing up while passing out. So not good.

The door popped open, and he wasn’t surprised when a drug gun barrel poked through the opening. “Human,” he said quickly, his voice a raspy grumble. “I’m human again. No need to shoot.”

The door opened a bit more, and he saw the gun wielder was the British cat squad cop from … yesterday? Oh, if he was lucky it was just yesterday. Behind him, Dylan peered over his shoulder, and said, “Oh, thank god.” He nudged the Brit aside and came into the room. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

Roan was going to ask him that, but it seemed redundant. So he carefully sat down on the bed so as not to flash the Brit (stupid paper gowns), and said, “ I have no idea. What happened? I mean, how did … it come out?” Officer Monty Python must have known the lion came out in Roan’s body, but he wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t going to confirm it if there was some doubt.

“I think it may have been my fault,” Dylan admitted, with a sheepish grimace. “The nurse came in to get me out of here, and we had a bit of an argument. Then you started growling, and she thought you were awake, but I saw your eyes, and knew we’d only woken up half of you.”

“No one was hurt?”

Dylan pointedly looked at Roan’s bleeding arm. “Only you.”

“How did this happen? Did I rip it out?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t here to see.”

Ooh, he really didn’t like that. If the lion could not only use his body but figure out how to pick something up … no way was that good. Lions shouldn’t be able to manipulate things in such a manner.

The Brit had lowered his weapon and had now come in, looking confused. “What happened exactly? I heard the roar from the lobby.”

“I hate hospitals,” Roan said, as if that explained anything. The way the Brit looked at him, he was thinking the same thing, but he didn’t inquire further.

Dylan caught him up on things. It had been a day and a half “more or less” (Dyl fudging the amount of time was never a good thing) since the tiger thing, and they didn’t think there was any permanent damage, which, again, wasn’t as good as it initially sounded. A burley male nurse came in to check on him, but rather than get the IV put back in, Roan asked him just to bandage him up so he could get out of here. The nurse gave him an epically disapproving look, a bit easier to take than Dylan’s blistering, scolding glare. Brit boy just looked on, professionally concerned but otherwise neutral. His name was apparently Gareth, but Roan’s cop habit made him refer to him by his last name, Tomlinson. Hell, when he was on the force, he was always McKichan, usually pronounced incorrectly.

The nurse did bandage him up, but said he’d have to talk to the doctor before he could be officially discharged. Roan knew the drill, so he agreed. Dylan told him he should stay and at least get some rest, but he’d brought him a bag containing some clothes anyways, because he was nice like that.

As for Tomlinson, he told him the tiger turned out to be a seventeen year old girl named Sage McHale, who still couldn’t quite believe her friends were dead, or that she had transformed into a tiger. She had been Jonathan Dyer’s latest girlfriend – the last of his girlfriends. He was the man who had been torn to pieces by the cats. Perhaps that was cosmic irony, or just showed how boundless his stupidity had been. Sage might be charged as an accomplice in the theft of the tiger blood from the lab, but she’d be unlikely to be charged in the deaths, because that was all bad timing. Dyer was infected with tiger blood, but the viral load hadn’t reached the expression stage, as it had with Sage and her lion infected friend, Gwendolyn George. Which basically meant the women were in viral synch, but the man wasn’t. Perhaps this proved something, but Roan had no idea what.

The Doctor who came in the room was Doctor Rosenberg, which he hadn’t been expecting, so Roan was unable to swallow his groan of disappointment. She asked Dylan to give them a couple of minutes, and even though Roan threw him a pleading look, Dylan left, taking the still curious but acquiescent Tomlinson with him.

Roan waited for her to open, but after a minute when she did nothing but sit down, he finally asked, “Are you giving me the silent treatment?”

“No. I just don’t know what to say.”

He could actually sympathize. “I’m not dying appreciably faster than last time, am I?”

“Not that I can tell.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “Look, we’re starting a pilot program over at the university hospital. We have a room that is essentially a loft apartment, but will allow for unobtrusive monitoring. I think you should move in temporarily. You wouldn’t stay there all the time, you could come and go as you pleased, you’d just have to sleep there at night, and otherwise treat it like your house.”

“Except Dyl wouldn’t be there.”

“Would you want him there?”

A good point. “The lion never came out in my body at Willow Creek. Aren’t we just wasting time?”

She sighed again, rubbing the center of her forehead like he was giving her a headache. “It’s either this or do fuck nothin’, kiddo.”

“I swear I’ve heard that before.” Roan looked at the fresh bandage on his arm, now spotted with blood, and had a sudden thought. “Why did I come back?”

“You asking me, or are you doin’ your thinkin’ out loud thing again?”

“Thinking out loud.” He looked around, recalling the scene, and almost laughed. “I came back because the lion knew it was trapped, and not getting out of this room, so there was no fun to be had. It voluntarily pulled back.”

Rosenberg just quirked an eyebrow at him. “You buckin’ for a psych eval?”

“No, I’m just trying to figure this out.”

She snorted derisively. “Join the fucking club. I’ve been trying to fucking figure you out since I met you.”

Suddenly Roan understood it. It all clicked into place like puzzle pieces, and he let out a breathless little laugh that might have been a sob if he hadn’t been on such nice drugs. “This is all my fault. When I started changing at will, I opened a door that can’t be closed. I learned to manipulate it. Now it’s learning to manipulate me.”

Her stare was unrelenting. “Okay, now I know you’re tryin’ for a section eight.”

“You know it makes sense. Why is this all happening now? Why didn’t it happen earlier?”

“It could be ‘cause your older, and the virus has never been known to live this long.”

She had a point, but it didn’t feel right to him at all. She was not inside his skin, she was not even infected.

Only he knew what was going on inside his skin. Although, truth to be told, he wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on. All he knew was it couldn’t be good.

****

At least once a day, Holden wondered why the hell he was with Scott. But it was times like these that he knew exactly why.

In the car, on the way to the party, Scott told him confidently to hang back, that he was going to find Mandy if she was there. Holden asked if he was going to draw her out with his nerdy shirt (for whatever reason, he decided to wear a button up red plain shirt, all buttoned up – it looked perfectly dorky, especially paired up with old, loose jeans). Scott simply said he knew what he was doing.

Holden should have known. The reason Scott was the captain of the Falcons, even though there were older and more experienced guys on the team, was because no matter what he played – from hockey to a pick up basketball game with the guys to computer solitaire – he always played to win. He never saw the point of not giving everything you had; as he once told him after a game when he was virtually too exhausted to move, “If you don’t leave it all on the ice, what’s the fucking point?” He tackled every competition like it was life or death. It was his own ruthless streak, which resonated with Holden – they had it in common.

It was a surprisingly well attended party, with partygoers spilling out on the lawn, and enough traffic that Holden was forced to park a block down from the house. Scott told him to let him get in the house before Holden approached, as they’d already agreed to not go as a couple (they were looking for someone, after all, not going as a social call), and Holden agreed, a little annoyed with him doing his bossy team captain bullshit.

But that dissipated once he realized what Scott was doing. He mussed up his hair as he walked down the sidewalk, and started unbuttoning his dorky shirt until it was all the way undone by the time he reached the house. He added to that a stony smile, which he gave to everyone as he casually sauntered up the front walk, giving nods of greeting to people who met his eye, and Holden watched heads turn as he walked into the house.

Scott was cute, but not truly remarkably so, save for his ice blue eyes. (Oh, maybe he was remarkably cute in a hockey sense, since none of those players were known for their pretty faces.) The scars on his face also detracted from the classically handsome category. But he did have one thing he could use as a tactical advantage, a weapon to win the game, and that was his body. He had a great physique, all that hard core training gave him a body to die for, and now he was showing off his hard, flat stomach and beautifully sculpted pecs as shamelessly as possible, with the stony smile making him seem approachable and not at all intimidating. Although it was mostly women looking at him, men looked too, but whether out of attraction or jealousy he couldn’t say. But this game was over and he had won, simply by showing off his remarkable torso. Holden had to laugh. Yeah, Scott did know what he was doing. How could he ever have doubted him? He played to win.

By the time Holden had gotten up the walk and squeezed through the front door, it was easy to find Scott, as he decided to hang out near the guy with the laptop playing DJ, casually posed in a way that suggested he wasn’t posing at all, a red plastic cup full of beer in his hand. The old jeans rode low on his hips, making his chest look even longer than it was, and just so beautiful. Holden’s eyes instantly went to that place on his abdomen that was so ticklish Scott laughed every time he kissed or nibbled there. Hell, he could just breathe on it the right way and get a reaction, which Scott claimed not to like so much, but very obviously he did.

And he had to shake his head to get his thoughts back on track. Goddamn it, Scott was pulling him into his trap too. Damn, he was good. That was the thing about the truly focused – their intensity could trip you up, even when you were expecting it. Holden wasn’t the only one watching him either. In this crowded room, he may as well have had a spotlight on him.

Finally, the first woman got up the confidence to go talk to him, and she was probably one of the prettiest in the house. Not Mandy, but if he’d been here to pick up a woman he’d have won the jackpot.

Holden decided to check out the rest of the house, looking for Mandy on the off chance she didn’t find Scott, although she’d have to have some powerful will or actually be a lesbian to resist that sex bomb. But there was no harm in being thorough.

Holden decided that college students lived here, or people who had never quite grown up. The furnishings were sparse, possibly indicative of having moved furniture out of the house in advance of the party, but he saw enough bongs, posters, and “vintage” (the nice way of saying old) clothes to get this was a slightly better than average crash pad. The mattress on the floor was the final giveaway. He hadn’t seen Mandy yet, but he’d seen enough het couples making out to feel slightly ill. They had no sense of decency. Shouldn’t they have at least thought of the children? Flaunting their sexuality like that. What was the world coming to?

He found a girl who looked a bit like Mandy from behind, but it couldn’t have been unless she’d had plastic surgery lengthen her jaw. That seemed unlikely.

Holden was in the kitchen when his phone bleeped at him. He and Scott still had their “safe word” system in place, in case one of them got into trouble or spotted Mandy when the other was out of the room. “Low” was still the trouble word, while “goal” meant that Mandy had been spotted. Checking his screen, Holden saw that Scott had just texted him “goal”. So it hadn’t taken him long to net the pigeon, had it? This was why Holden never wanted to play any game with him; this bastard would probably win every time and lord it over him.

Holden had just put his phone back in his pocket and started towards the kitchen door when he heard the gunshots.