5 – This Love

“Rico was picked up by a john last time you saw him?” Holden asked, not sure if he should believe him.

Newt nodded, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. “He wanted some rock. I didn’t, I mean, what the fuck would I want rock for? Last time I used it I thought my skin was gonna fall off, you know? Besides, I was fine with coke and X, which pretty much does the same thing when you use ‘em together, ‘cept your skin doesn’t feel like it’s gonna fall off.”

Holden nodded, like that made perfect sense. He actually wanted to get up and punch him, but how would that do any good? Besides, he wasn’t sure why he was losing his temper with him now. Had the pot finally wore off? “Where does the john come into this?”

“Well, we were near the bus station, you know? We were both broke, he’d spent his cash on a bottle of tequila, and we had no way of getting any more right then. I had no interest, I had all the drugs I wanted, but he couldn’t live without some rock. So he figured what the hell, do a trick, get some cash. It wasn’t too long before he got picked up. He was supposed to meet me back here, but he never showed up.”

“Do you know who picked him up?”

He shook his head, exhaling a stream of smoke. “Nope.”

“You see what he was driving, what he looked like?”

Newt gave him a half hearted shrug, paying more attention to the television screen, where someone was wiping down a stove top to the utter amazement of an easily entertained audience. “Just a beaten up white pick up truck.”

“What make?”

“You mean type? I dunno. Probably a Ford.”

Great. This was as good as no information at all. “Never seen him before? Not a regular?”

He shook his head and shrugged, too stoned to give a shit. “Dunno man. I haven’t done a street job in a while. I’ve been working as a mule.”

“Did you recognize anyone working the strip that night?”

Newt finished the cigarette, smoking it down to a nub no bigger than a Tylenol. He stabbed it out violently in the top of the Coke can. “Wasn’t a lot of people out there then.” He paused briefly, considering his surely fragmented memories. “Maybe Jewel was there. Across the street.”

“Maybe?”

“It was dark, I didn’t pay much att -”

Newt’s answer was cut off by a scream from a neighboring room, full of the kind of ragged pain and terror that made them both jump.

Automatically, Holden jumped up to his feet and headed for the door, shoving the spool aside and getting pissed off at Newt’s pointless paranoia.

Out in the parking lot, he found a guy with bad skin and prison tattoos trying to haul a bloody, screaming woman back into his unit. She was wearing the mandatory hooker uniform of a miniskirt and a halter top, and he wondered if this asshole was a pimp. He had the greasy look of one. “Shut up, bitch!” he snapped, like the classy guy he obviously was. “I told you not to fuck around with me -”

Holden stormed across the lot, something ugly welling up in his gut. He hated pimps. “Get your hands off her, motherfucker!”

The guy looked up with a deep, murderous scowl, his eyes like bullet holes in a corpse. He had the woman – a girl really; she probably wasn’t older than seventeen, a junkie newbie recently turned out – by the hair, his fist tangled in it like a net. “Fuck off, faggot.”

Holden was barely aware that Newt, still standing in the doorway of his room, snickered. “Oh man, yer gonna get it now.”

Roan would probably have advised him not to make a move first, as Roan seem to prefer people commit to a plan of action before he showed them how utterly stupid it was, but he was too angry to be logical or even care. As soon as he reached the guy he threw a punch. The guy must have seen it coming, but he was too drunk or stoned to move fast, and Holden clipped him on the jaw. It snapped his head back, but the guy threw the girl into the nearest parked car, which she landed against with a sickening noise, and kicked Holden.

He was going for the groin but came up short and kicked him in the thigh instead. It still hurt, still made him stumble back a step, and the would be pimp stepped up to deliver a punch of his own, which connected squarely with Holden’s left eye.

This wasn’t his first time at the rodeo, though. He already knew the punch was coming, and decided to take it, because it gave him an opening. While he was throwing his punch, Holden decided to kick him. So while he landed the punch, Holden kicked him in the nuts at almost the same exact moment. And he was kicking a fucking field goal.

While the force of the punch made Holden reel back and see stars, followed by amorphous blobs of dark spots dancing in his vision, the pimp let out a short, sharp shriek, almost like a little girl, and grabbed his balls, doubling over and slumping back against another car. Even though his vision was still blurry, Holden forced himself forward and took advantage of the pimp’s doubled over state to grab him by his greasy head and ram his knee straight into his ugly face. Holden did it a couple of times, feeling a pain in his knee as well as a warm rush of blood down his pantleg as he knocked a few of the pimp’s teeth out. Holden then shoved him to the asphalt, ignoring the pain in his leg, and gave the pimp a kick in the ribs. “Beat on someone your own size, you ugly fuckhole.” He spit on him, just for a good measure of contempt.

The pimp was panting hard, but he managed to roll up to all fours, and spit out a mouth full of blood before saying, “You’ve made a big fucking mistake -”

Holden kicked him in the head, sending him collapsing to the parking lot. “No, you have, motherfucker.”

“No fights!” Sivan exclaimed, waving a large handgun as he came charging out of his office. “No fights here! You take it away!” At the sight of Sivan with a gun, Newt disappeared back into his room, and Holden couldn’t blame him.

Holden held up his hands, dipping his head in acknowledgment. “It’s cool, it’s over. I’m gonna go, okay?”

Sivan nodded his head like his neck was a spring. “Fine, you go then. No fights.”

“No fights,” Holden agreed, backing away. He looked at the beaten girl, and said, “I know somebody who could help you escape from this bastard. Wanna come with me?”

She looked at him suspiciously, through bruised eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

“A man whore who hates pimps. You comin’ with me or not?”

She still seemed dubious, but her options were non-existent, so she trailed behind him as he walked back to his car. Well, limped. His knee still hurt, his face hurt, and he thought he might have tasted blood. But other than that, he felt fantastic. Jessie mostly dealt with kids trapped in sex slavery, but he wasn’t one hundred percent sure this girl was legal. Either way, Jessie would help her.

Maybe that was the only good thing he could get out of this whole situation.

****

Although Fiona knew what to expect, she was still kind of surprised.

Rainbow had called her that afternoon. Calls to MK Investigations were being forwarded to her number since Roan was “indisposed” (that was the official line for now, even though Fiona thought it was somehow Edwardian in its vagueness), and a nervous Rainbow asked if she could come by and talk, as she wanted to talk about something she wasn’t comfortable discussing over the phone. She thought that was weird, but since Roan had always said Rainbow couldn’t be more harmless if she was a declawed kitten stuck up a tree, Fiona gave her her address. It might not be her address for very much longer anyways.

Tank had asked her to move to Boston to be with him. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Tank, because she did, more than she thought she would. He was a bit crazy, but in a good way, not in a “I’m gonna kill all of you!” sort of way. He didn’t even mind her being a dominatrix, nor did he expect her to bring her work home with her either. He spoke a lot of French, but you couldn’t have everything.

She just couldn’t picture being a hockey girlfriend, or the girlfriend of any pro athlete really. She wasn’t a blonde supermodel type, she didn’t have fake breasts and she wasn’t skinny, nor was she the type to stay at home while he was away fucking groupies. But to be fair to Tank, that kind of woman didn’t seem to appeal to him. If you couldn’t hold your own in a bar fight, he didn’t want to know you, and that pretty much held for women as well as men. That left him a small pool of women to draw from, and supermodel types just couldn’t make the cut. (Well, maybe Naomi Campbell, but she was probably the only one.)

And it wasn’t like she could just pick up and move to a city where she didn’t know anyone. Okay, she could … and she wasn’t without skills. Beyond her dominatrix gifts, she still had her programming skills, and she could always go back to doing some web designing.

But if she left now, she’d feel like she was abandoning Roan, and she couldn’t do that. She would have liked to talk this over with him, but he actually was “indisposed”. He hadn’t regained consciousness yet, as far as she knew. Which reminded her, she needed to drop by the hospital tonight, maybe drop Dylan off a sandwich. He probably hadn’t eaten since she last saw him.

Nine o’clock sharp, there was a meek knock at her door. Rainbow was essentially the hippie stereotype, in a lilac peasant blouse, a long rainbow colored skirt, and a dark blue knitted shawl. (Hand knitted? Maybe.) Her dark hair was curly like a grown out perm, and she had it gathered behind her in a ponytail as thick as a horse’s tail. There was something homely and fragile about her, and you instinctively wanted to protect her. She could see why Roan always had a soft spot for her, even though she was one of those kitty cult people.

She sat Rainbow down, gave her some chamomile tea, and slowly pulled the story out of her. It had to be pulled, as it was disjointed, and she had a tendency to wander all over the place. But from what she could gather, Rainbow was worried that the Church’s new leader, James Campanelli, was doing something terrible.

Since Eli’s death, it seemed like there had been a revolving door of leaders for Divine Transformation. James had only recently taken over, as the old one had died during his last transformation. Rainbow was not a fan of James’s aggressive style, and there were rumors that he had a cabin up in the woods, and that certain members were invited up there on certain weekends, and he had a side internet business connected to it. Rainbow was nervous and vague, and it was all Fiona could do to get something concrete she could work with.

Apparently the rumors had it as some type of “fight club” for cats. Only these were generally fights to the death. She wouldn’t have believed that was true, except one of James’s assistants showed up at the church one day with a bandage on his ear. Apparently, the earlobe had been ripped off, but he told several different stories about what happened, and none made any sense.

She didn’t want to go to the police for several reasons: she didn’t trust them, what if word got back to James, what if they raided the church and people got hurt? She wanted none of that. She was hoping Roan could check it out, find out if there was any truth to it, because if anyone was going to find out the truth, it was Roan. Fiona had to give her that, because few were better at it.

She didn’t have a web address for her, but that was okay, because as soon as Rainbow was gone she did her own search to see if she could turn up any domain names or sites owned by Campanelli. She found two, one which wasn’t being used yet, and another you needed a credit card number to enter. Which didn’t bode well.

Holden was the assistant investigator, and she could hand it off to him, but she was reluctant to do so. This was cat business, and as tough as Holden was, he would be fucked going up against some angry transformed all by himself. (A gun would help, but he’d still be at something of a disadvantage.) Roan was the king of the jungle, and he should have no problem subduing cats; it was what he did, sometimes without intention.

But he had to regain consciousness to do it, and she didn’t know if he ever would. So what should she do?

She decided to crack Campanelli’s site and find out. She’d let whatever she saw on there guide her to her next move. She just hoped it wasn’t fetish porn … although Holden would probably be good at handling that.

It suddenly occurred to her how weird an agency MK Investigations was – run by a cat guy, who employed a part time dominatrix and a hooker who fancied himself a vigilante. In that case, there was no one better to handle this kind of shit.

Again, as long as it wasn’t fetish porn. That would suck.

4 – Ego Death

Roan found himself standing in a hospital hallway, sure he should be somewhere, but not one hundred percent certain where that place was. He turned to find a lion waiting at one end of the hall, its face framed by a huge fluffy fall of mane. It was growling at him, and he shook his head and gave it the finger while turning away. “Like I’d be scared of you. “

At the other end of the hall, there was a man standing there. It took Roan a minute to recognize him, but he looked like a younger version of himself. He didn’t really look like that, did he? His face was leaner than he thought, although his hair was a slightly lighter shade of red, lighter than it had ever been. But this was a dream, he knew that, and things didn’t always make sense in dreams. “Maybe you should be scared,” his other self said. “You’re losing the fight.”

“What fight?”

“You’re not even trying, are you? Since when did you become such a pussy?”

He sighed, wondering if he could actually punch himself. Would it hurt? Would he care? “Go away. I talk to myself enough.” He turned towards the door he saw in his peripheral vision, only to find it was gone. There was just a smooth, unbroken wall. He touched it, feeling stucco, but there was no seam. He turned, only to find that his second self and the lion exchanged places. “Just fuck off already,” he told the lion, and turned to face himself. He – the other he – was sitting in one of those outdoor patio chairs that cafes sometimes had, something that looked like wrought iron filigree that was either freezing cold or too hot, and invariably one of the most uncomfortable things you could sit on beyond a chair full of spikes. The table he was sitting at was a wooden end table, though. “You do know how stupid this all is, don’t you?”

Roan glared at him. “ Talking to myself? Yeah. What’d you do to your hair, you stupid fuck? You tryin’ to go for a junior Carrot Top look?”

His other self didn’t appear amused. “Aren’t you tired of all this sad sack bullshit? You used to be better than this. What happened?”

Roan turned away, not about to get in an argument with a smart ass like himself, but there was the lion, still growling at him. Huffing a sigh through his nose, he picked up the lion. It felt as light as a paper doll. “I told you to piss off.” He then tossed the lion aside, a piece of garbage. He heard a thud of impact, but didn’t bother to see if it had landed on its feet.

The hallway became a narrow corridor, and as he turned a corner, he almost walked straight into his younger, other self. “If you can repel the lion that easily, why don’t you? Oh, I get it. You’re afraid of yourself, not the lion. How distressingly Freudian.”

“You think I won’t hit you, is that?”

His younger self smirked in a really irritating manner. “Oh, I know you will. You enjoy beating yourself up almost as much as everyone else does. You’re taking all the sport out of it.”

He didn’t think about it, he just threw a punch, and it would have hit his other self square on the jaw if he had been standing there, but he had disappeared in a blink. “You’re so predictable,” his younger self said, shaking his head in exasperation. He was now standing farther away, arms crossed over his chest, somehow outside on a sunny sidewalk now. Damn it, he hated dreams.

He closed his eyes and focused on waking up. He wasn’t sure it would work, especially since this wasn’t technically a nightmare, but it was worth a shot.

“You really think that’s gonna work?”

He sighed heavily, and opened his eyes. “Fine, smart ass, say what you’re gonna say so I can wake up.”

His other self shook his head sadly. “I’ve already said it. You already know it too. You’re being an obtuse idiot because it’s easier. Since when have you taken the path of least resistance?”

“Since the path I took didn’t matter in the least.”

“Is it old age that’s made you such a coward? Don’t blame Paris again. You always knew he was going to die.”

“Yes, that makes the pain less, doesn’t it?” he snapped, tired of this. What, like he didn’t know he’d become pathetic, that he’d given up? He knew all to well he had. He wasn’t even a hundred percent sure why now, except the will had just gotten sucked out of him. Yes, Paris was the main reason, but he wasn’t all of it. It just seemed like he was fighting a battle that was pointless, and all he was doing was wearing himself out. The haters would win, because they always won, and he got tired of beating his head against the same walls.

Roan just scowled at his younger self, and wondered if he killed himself in a dream if he’d actually die. It might be worth the risk to find out.

****

Holden had just reached the Night Owl when he felt his phone start vibrating in his pocket. He wasn’t going to answer it, especially since it was Scott, but by the sixth ring he had a change of heart. “Yeah?”

“Ever heard of a film called “The Beast With A Thousand Eyes”?” Scott asked, without preamble.

“Um, no. Why?”

“It’s on channel 22 right now, I’ve been watching it … it’s kind of mesmerizing in its awfulness. I think the monster is a puppet with papier mache on it. And as far as I can tell, it has three eyes at most, unless the rest are on its butt or something.”

“That’s gonna happen. Is there a reason you’re calling with a movie review?”

“I’m bored. I thought maybe, if you weren’t doing anything, you’d like to come over. We could watch the movie and try this new microwave caramel popcorn that somehow ended up in our kitchen.”

“Ew! That sounds disgusting.”

“I know, right? Grey doesn’t cop to buyin’ it, but he must have. I didn’t.”

“Isn’t Grey there?”

“Naw, he’s at Tegan’s tonight.” Tegan was Grey’s current girlfriend. He knew this because he had been around Scott way too much.

And that was the problem. He’d been around Scott way too much. He didn’t want a relationship, he couldn’t handle one, and this was starting to feel like one. It was both frightening and strangely comforting, which was even more frightening. But he liked listening to his voice, so he settled back against the car seat and closed his eyes. “I’m working on a case right now.”

“Anything exciting?”

“God no. It’s never anything exciting.” He thought he heard screaming in the background. “The monster eat someone?”

“It’s trying to. Mainly it seems to be humping the ground as a means of locomotion.”

“Now that’s a great date.”

Scott snorted humorously. “Not humping the ground, no.”

“Hump whatever you can get, that’s what I always say.”

“Oh really?”

“Well, with some obvious restrictions.”

Scott chuckled, and took a drink of something, probably a beer. Holden could barely recall first meeting Scott. He thought he was cute, but was overwhelmed by Grey’s gentle giant persona and the weird vibe he was picking up from Tank (which turned out to be totally justified, and yet not, as he was simply assuming a defensive posture, it was just that Tank’s idea of a defensive posture was total insanity. And that was brilliant). He just assumed Scott was a typical jock. Even Grey turned out not to be typical in any sense of the word; in fact, he still didn’t get him at all. Except Grey could be fearless, ‘cause who was going to fuck with him, and he could see why he idolized Roan, macho asshole that he often was. After a moment, Scott said, “I should be up for a while. So if you wanna drop by later, feel free.”

“What if Grey comes home?”

“What if he does? He won’t care.”

Normally he would call bullshit, but Grey was so oddly laid back he really did bet he wouldn’t care, as long as they didn’t fuck in front of him. And even then he might not care as long as they didn’t block his view of the television. “I don’t know how late I’m gonna be out tonight.”

“Well, keep it in mind. Maybe we can meet for a drink one of these days, huh?”

“What, like a date?”

“Nah, just a beer.”

“Maybe.” They were talking about a date, it was just that neither of them would admit it. Oh well, why not? It was probably easier to pretend.

Holden hung up and got out of the car, heading towards the night manger’s office. It was funny, but after all these years, Sivan was still the night manager. He was a squat but gaunt man with skin the color of a caramel macchiato and an indefinable accent that was almost as comically thick as his mustache, which was definitely a pornstache to be proud of. He was quick to anger but also quick to calm down, which was a good thing since it wasn’t always clear what he was angry about. He was a fighter, though, or had been at some point; his thick sausage fingers had callused knuckles, the type you could only earn through years of punching heavy bags or people. There were rumors that he used to be a “freedom fighter” back in his original homeland, but no one was sure where that was, as apparently every time he was asked he gave a different answer. That led to rumors he used to work for the mob – someone’s mob – but he was too old to be an enforcer now. He was cheerfully crooked though, happy to take money and look the other way when drug deals and prostitution took place in his parking lot, and being as mysterious and grizzled as he was, no one was brave enough to rob him.

Holden slipped him a twenty, and Sivan told him what room Newt was in, without once looking away from his portable television, which seemed to be showing a Japanese game show involving scantily clad girls and lizards. (Surely that made sense to someone.)

Newt’s room was farthest away from the office, which made sense. The Night Owl was a bunch of single units laid out in an almost perfect U shaped formation, and Newt’s room was basically the bottom of the U, the cornerstone that connected the two arms. He knocked on the door, and wondered what he would say if Newt had a client.

After a moment, he heard stuff shifted away from the door (Newt was paranoid, and often piled stuff up in front of a door, whether he could lock it or not), and Newt flung the door open wide. He stared at him a long moment, his pupils so wide you could have driven a truck through them, and finally said, “You’re not the pizza guy.”

What was Newt on? He was standing there in nothing but blue striped boxer shorts that couldn’t have been his (Newt often liked to freeball it), showing a long, lean torso that was almost concave, a tattoo of a bright green lizard over his left pectoral, and a small reddish-purple bruise visible near his right hip. His chest was naturally hairless, save for a bit of barely visible fuzz in the center of his torso, which Newt always attributed to being half-Filipino. But since Holden had met some hairy Filipinos, he wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Newt’s hair was dark and wavy more than curly, but right now it was a lank rat’s nest of a tangle, and the smell of sweat coming off him seemed to indicate he hadn’t showered in a while. “Dude, it’s me, Fox.”

Newt stared at him once more, clearly tripping balls and barely holding on to the Earth. Holden was about to give up and come back another day, maybe when he was slightly more sober, when he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh. I thought you’d joined the Marines.”

He wasn’t kidding, otherwise he would have laughed. “What?”

Newt scratched his head with dirty fingernails. He not only had a club stamp on the back of his hand, but it looked like he had a tattoo on the underside of his wrist. It just said Fuck in thick black letters. “Oh, wait – I mean an escort agency. I don’t know what I was thinkin’ of. C’mon in, want some acid?”

“You’re doing acid?” That would explain a lot. Since Newt had retreated from the door, scratching his ass and revealing a new tattoo (a small spider on his back, in tramp stamp location at the base of his spine), Holden had come in, and was almost overwhelmed by the funk of the room, which smelled like body odor, burnt wires, and mold. It was dark, the only light a silent television playing flickering pictures of what appeared to be an informercial. The covers had been pulled off the bed and lumped up on the floor, like a nest for a large bird, while empty booze bottles and orange juice cartons were scattered across the stained carpet like land minds. He had to look around carefully for a place to step.

“I think so.” Newt paused. “Or was that yesterday? Fuck if I know. What month is it?”

“June.”

That startled a laugh out of him as he sat on the stripped mattress and picked up a lit cigarette from where it had been balanced on the top of a Coke can. It looked like a regular cigarette, but the exceedingly acrid smell of it told Holden it had been laced with something more potent than tobacco. Holy fuck, he wasn’t dabbling in angel dust now, was he? “I promised my mother I’d start rehab in June. Good thing I didn’t specify the year, huh? Could you put that back up against the door?”

Holden turned, and saw one of those huge wooden spools, the type they rolled up industrial cables on. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“Side of the road. Or somebody’s yard, I dunno. It was here when I woke up.”

Holden shook his head as he shoved the heavy thing back up against the door. He’d accuse anyone else of lying, but not Newt. He’d probably killed more brain cells than he’d ever actually had – the fact that he wasn’t a drooling vegetable just showed you how physically resilient he was.

His real name was Shawn, and he was from somewhere in Texas (location varied, just like it varied for Sivan). He was twenty five going on eight hundred and seven, if you considered how much mileage his fun adventures in drug abuse must have added to his life. That lizard tattoo was supposedly where he got his nickname from, but Holden always figured it was really from the movie Aliens. That little girl the aliens couldn’t manage to kill was called Newt, and drugs hadn’t figured out a way to kill Shawn yet either. One monster was as good as another.

“How you gonna let the pizza man in?” Holden wondered.

Newt looked at him blankly. “Pizza man? You ordered a pizza? Thanks, dude.”

With a heavy sigh, he sat on the end of the mattress, and fixed him with a scornful look. “If I ask you about Rico, will you remember anything that actually happened, or didn’t happen three years ago?”

Newt gazed at him with those blown pupil eyes, his irises a mere suggestion of hazel, and said, “Why, did that john kill him?”

Holden stared back at him, wondering if it could possibly be that simple.

3 – Never Let Me Down Again

By the way people were scrambling about in the otherwise sedate lobby, Dylan knew something had gone horribly wrong. He just bet Roan had something to do with it.

He was right. He took the elevator up to Roan’s floor, and was almost immediately greeted by a metal security door, where Rosenberg and several butch orderlies, some with drug guns that looked distressingly like sniper rifles, were waiting as if preparing for a siege. Rosenberg looked at him and opened her mouth to speak, only to be silenced by an angry roar, loud enough that she winced and most of the orderlies cringed. The two biggest orderlies were peering through bulletproof glass windows into the IU – also known as the “infected unit” – and one of them muttered in Spanish, “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

Dylan moved beside Rosenberg, and asked, with an even mixture of disbelief and weariness, “Roan got out?”

“He was number two.”

“Number two?”

“Remember that problem with the panther infected that cut my dinner short? Before I even got here he escaped his room, transformed. A twelve oh two – emergency evac – was called while they got the cat wranglers up to drug him, but before they could move in, Roan burst out of his room and got into a roaring contest with it. The panther tried to attack him, and he threw it behind the check in desk. It’s still making noises, but I think it’s hurt, as it ain’t coming out of there. I’d say its given up, but Roan isn’t accepting surrender.”

“Wasn’t he drugged?”

The big orderly closest to him, a Hispanic built like a bouncer but with a more military style buzz cut, snorted and said, “Fuck yeah man, he had enough Phenobarbital in him to put down a pair of bull elephants. He shouldn’t have gained consciousness ‘til Christmas.”

Oh god, Roan and his drug tolerance. Surely Rosenberg knew of his pill popping, but apparently his tolerance was greater than anyone had imagined. “Well, shit. He survived elephant tranquilizers; I guess that means he can survive anything.”

Even though Dylan had been speaking to Rosenberg, the orderly looked at him funny. “He’s had elephant tranqs?”

Rosenberg chose to ignore him. “I’m hoping maybe you can disrupt him.”

“How?”

“Talk at him, or, more probably yell at him. He may recognize your voice, and it’ll throw him off enough that we can fill his ass with new tranqs.”

“What?” Dylan couldn’t really believe what he was hearing. “He hasn’t recognized my voice once.”

“This is a stress situation,” she said. “His adrenaline is up, he’s frayed. I’m hoping you can get in through the edges.”

As a theory, it was interesting. Viable? Probably not. “No offense at all, but that’s a sucky plan.”

“Tell me about it, but it’s all I got. You got anything better?”

Dylan nudged the bouncer orderly aside and looked out the bulletproof portal into the ward beyond. There was Roan, crouched on top of the reception desk, completely naked, IV tubes snaking out behind him, still attached to his arms and making his blood ooze out in long crimson trails on the white floor. Of course he still looked human, save for the odd way the muscles in his arms, chest, back, and legs bulged and twitched, like they were undergoing simultaneous but separate spasms. But he hadn’t transformed, not one bit. Save for his eyes, which had that flat lack of humanity in them; they were pure animal, all inarticulate rage. He was snarling loudly, lips pulled back painfully to reveal darker than average gums and shorter than (lion) average teeth, although his canine teeth did kind of look pronounced. Then again, lately, they always looked kind of pronounced. He could still remember kissing him a couple weeks’ back and cutting his tongue on one of them.

“No, I guess not.” He felt an unaccustomed swell of anger towards Roan, and looked around for whatever released the security door. He found it and threw the latch, but the burley orderly grabbed him and held him back.

“Let him go,” Rosenberg ordered. And for an elderly woman, she could give you orders like a drill sergeant. “Just open the door a crack, Dylan. Miguel, aim your gun through it, and when you have a clear shot, take it.”

“Through a crack in the door?” he complained. “What the fuck am I, a sniper?”

“Just try.”

“Let me talk to him first,” Dylan said, although he knew almost immediately “talk” was wrong the word. He shouldered open the door a crack, and angrily shouted, “Roan, stop this now!”

Roan cocked his head, looking in his direction, but he wasn’t quite looking at him. He wasn’t sure the lion’s vision was good enough to make him out, or if it at all cared.

“Are you making a point, is that it? You’re stronger than the lion, so this means you’re doing this on purpose! Give it a rest, Roan, you’re embarrassing yourself!” He didn’t know if any of this was true, but Dylan felt a sort of grim satisfaction shouting it.

Now the lion was interested. He jumped off the check in desk, landing easily on his feet, and started stalking towards the door. As slender as he was, naked, tattooed and scarred and dragging tubes leaking blood, he should have been pathetic, but he was truly frightening. It wasn’t just the growling, although that helped, and the hard look in his eye, although that was most of it. He was actually stalking, walking in a way that was partially stiff although occasionally fluid, a gait just not built for the body that was using it.

“I can’t get a shot,” the orderly complained. “Unless you want me to drug his ankles.”

“Ankles would do,” Rosenberg told him.

“Stop it Roan, now! I mean it! This has gone far enough!”

Roan’s snarl ratcheted up several notches in volume, and the way his upper lip curled so dramatically, it looked like he was tearing his mouth with the force of it. “Damn it, Roan, stop!” He screamed it, so angry he was actually starting to cry. He didn’t realize it immediately, he just felt tears on his cheeks, and knew his eyes weren’t just watering from the orderly’s aftershave. (Although it was pretty powerful.)

Amazingly, Roan froze. Something like confusion passed over his face, a fast moving cloud of an expression, but for a moment the lion wasn’t dominant. He seemed to be wavering unsteadily on his feet for a moment, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor.

Dylan shoved open the door all the way, intending to go to Roan, but the beefy orderly grabbed him and held him back, while the other one, a thinner white guy who was almost seven feet tall, moved on ahead, aiming his drug gun down at Roan. He wasn’t moving. “Let him go, get the panther,” Rosenberg said, although it was actually an order.

Reluctantly, the orderly took his hand off his shoulder, and went to the check in desk. Dylan and Rosenberg both went to Roan, who was being watched carefully by the giant orderly. She put a hand on his neck, searching for a pulse, while Dylan wasn’t sure whether to slap Roan or hug him. It didn’t matter, as he seemed to be out cold again. Even his muscles had gone back to being still.

“Pulse is erratic,” she reported. “I think he’s okay, we just really need to stop the bleeders.”

The bouncer orderly shot the panther, and the pneumatic hiss and clunk of the drug gun made Dylan start. He’d learned to hate that noise as much as a gunshot.

Rosenberg patted him on the back, and said, “Good job, kiddo. He heard you.”

But did it do any good? He looked down at Roan, still and pale, blue veins pulsing faintly beneath adrenaline flushed skin, eyelids looking bruised. Dylan didn’t need to ask Rosenberg if he was comatose again, because he already knew the answer.

He honestly wondered if Roan would ever wake up again. It was all he could do not to start crying even harder.

****

How long ago was it that he was sharing a joint with a hockey player, watching a science show? Holden couldn’t remember right now, but he was having a curious sense of déjà vu. Although sitting on a roof sharing a joint with an Asian transvestite hooker wasn’t really the same thing at all.

His initial scoping of his old corners turned up no one familiar, until he ran into Ravyn, and she seemed surprised to see him. After ribbing him about going “big time” on all of them, she said she was taking a break as her feet were killing her, and invited him to join her. Her place to go and smoke in peace turned out to be the roof top of a seedy bar, which had a single floor transient hotel just above it. To access the roof, they had to walk through both. The dive bar was straight oriented but little attended, and the bartender, an older bald guy with a head surely as wrinkled as his ball sack, seemed to not really notice or care about Ravyn passing through the bar, suggesting he was used to it. They encountered no one in the hallway of the hotel, although Holden smelled mildew, cigarettes, burned soup, and despair, suggesting someone was staying up here. He wondered how long they’d last before they committed suicide, because this was pretty much the last stop before death.

Upstairs, the roof was a mess of gravel, peeling tar paper, bird shit, and cigarette butts, as others apparently used her rooftop getaway at times. And it was her until she took off the wig. Ravyn was very serious about this; when he was in female drag, he was a she, Ravyn. When the guise was off, he was a he again, simply Alan.

Ravyn popped off her shoes, dramatic but cheap heels, and sat down against the emergency stairwell doorway. Holden joined her, mainly because there wasn’t much else to do. She pulled a short but fat blunt out of her padded bra, and once she lit up, she seemed to just assume he would be joining her. He took a toke, mainly just to be friendly, but the stuff was heavy duty and hit him hard; he felt momentarily dizzy. Maybe he hadn’t eaten enough beforehand.

After some minor chit chat, catching up on each other’s sordid lives, he got to what he wanted to ask: all about Rico. She’d heard what had happened to him and, much like him, was surprised Rico had lived so long. She hadn’t seen him for maybe eight months, so she wasn’t a great witness and he was probably wasting his time with pointless nostalgia. But then she said, “You should ask Newt. If Rico was out partying, it was with him.”

“Newt’s back? I thought he was in jail in Vegas.”

“Eh, that was just a drunk tank thing. It got blown out of proportion.” Ravyn took another toke and offered him the joint, but he shook his head, taking a pass.

Newt was a fellow street kid, generally a hustler, but sometimes a low level drug mule. He was the Hunter S. Thompson of hustlers, but only if you considered the character of Hunter S. Thompson in the Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas movie and not the writer. He took so many drugs he seemed to be perpetually stoned, even when he was sober. He’d rewired his own brain with serious substance abuse, and it wasn’t just a miracle he was alive, but a miracle he hadn’t been involved in some kind of multi-state crime spree where he died in a hail of bullets. That was still on the table, and if you were betting on Newt’s death – and some surely were – that had to be the lead vote getter. He wasn‘t violent, but he was a perpetual fuck up who was inherently unpredictable. “Where’s Newt staying now?”

Ravyn snorted before releasing the smoke through her nostrils. “Knowin’ him? Under the viaduct or in someone’s bathtub. But what I’ve heard is he’s been crashing at the Night Owl motel.”

Holden groaned. The Night Owl. What a shithole. You didn’t even have to rent the room by the hour, you could get it in twenty minute intervals. “The one on Franklin?”

“One and the same.”

“He’d be better off under the viaduct.”

Ravyn laughed more than was warranted, indicating she was really fucked up. Well, her feet probably didn’t hurt anymore. “Yeah, I think I once got crabs from the bedspread there.”

“I think everyone has.” He got to his feet, and took a deep breath to try and clear the cobwebs away. “I’m gonna go see if he’s around. See you around, huh?”

She gave him a strangely sad look. “No, honey, don’t. Didn’t your preacher daddy teach you about Lot’s wife? Once you escape, you should never look back. Fox, you should just get the hell out of here and count your blessings that you were smart enough and fast enough to do it. There are no happy endings here. I’m sorry for Tika an’ all, but even dead, Rico may have ended up one of the lucky ones. No good is gonna come from pokin’ around.”

As depressing as that was, he knew she was probably right. But he had started this, and he felt compelled to finish it, or at least try.

It was just one step up from being completely useless.