Roan smelled like bloody death all the way home.

Dylan had fallen asleep and seemed so peaceful that he hated to even risk waking him up, so he used the downstairs shower. He was under the spray until the water turned ice cold, and he wasn’t sure the smell was completely out of his skin. He hoped it was psychosomatic.

He was tired, too tired to trudge upstairs, so he flopped on the couch, naked and wet, and dragged the throw on the couch over him, settling his head against the arm rest. He’d seen the message machine’s blinking light, but he studiously ignored it.

He slept heavily, but dreamed too much. In one, he was fighting an endless swarm of biting black insects that he could only see out of the corner of his eyes, but made his skin unbearably itchy. The next dream, he was inexplicably in a cage, but in his Human form, and he couldn’t get out. Occasionally people would walk by and he’d call out to them, but they’d ignore him. He could feel the lion wanting to come out, and yet unable to. He didn’t get it.

Frustration alone woke him up, his head pounding sickly in his temples, a drumbeat that only he could hear. He peeled himself off the sofa, not surprised but disappointed that only three hours had passed. It was still pouring outside, the light grey, and he felt like he was in a submarine that was slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

He went downstairs to steal some boxers from the dryer, and he stared at his cage for a while, seeing it as the small prison it was, like a prop from a horror film. His head continued to pound, like he had an angry old man banging his fist against the inside of his skull, so he went back upstairs and rooted around in a first aid kit until he found some codeine. Yes, he had promised Dylan he was off the stuff except when he was post-change, but goddamn it, he felt like his fucking headaches was included in the compromise. He washed the pills down with a pale ale snagged from the fridge. Yeah, it was way too early to drink, but when he was woken open by a headache, all bets were off.

He decided to actually listen to his messages while waiting for the pills to kick in. The first was from last night. Dee had called, to report that he and Luke had gone to see “his movie” last night (Con’s play turned movie). They had enjoyed it (kind of), but Dee found it (quote) “equally hilarious and appalling” that “his” character (the character that Con had loosely based on him) was made straight for the film.

Con’s ex-wife, Siobhan, had invited him along to the local premiere a month ago and thought he ought to come, but Roan declined, saying that he just couldn’t face it. And he couldn’t, not really, although one night curiosity got the better of him and he snuck out to a late night showing alone (he told Dylan he was on a stake out). The movie was okay, and he wasn’t really surprised by the changes made to Con’s original play: the title was now “Requiem” (which made no fucking sense in a story context, but what the hell), and the church’s protection and knowledge of the abusive priest was watered down heavily, as was the family’s initial response to the abuse (they took the priest’s side and accused Con of making it up and being “wicked”; in the film, this response was limited to simple disbelief, not accusations that he was a liar). Yes, the cop character based on him was inexplicably made straight, removing any romantic subtext from scenes with Con’s character (whose sexuality was never mentioned - great straight washing), and was also reduced to what was an extended cameo. In the play he was a major supporting character; in the film, he had maybe ten minutes’ screen time. The screenwriter had also created a pretty, shy neighbor girl, presumably a romantic interest for Connor. (Siobhan’s character in the play had been his best friend, also wearied by the constant oppression of her strict family, and while she was still in the film, her role was reduced as well). If you hadn’t seen the play it was okay; if you’d seen the play, you knew it was crap. Still, the whole time, he kept imagining how chuffed Con would have been to see his play on the big screen, even in a highly bastardized form. Oh, he’d have gotten royally pissed at the filmmakers and probably would have slung beer bottles at their heads, but for about the length of the film he’d be thrilled to see his baby up there. Then he’d start kicking heads in. Roan would have helped.

Siobhan had told him the studio didn’t want a “gay” film because they never made much money, and beyond that she felt it got “focus grouped to death”. Roan didn’t know why they didn’t just write a rip off script and film that instead; it probably would have been cheaper. But he didn’t get the entertainment industry and would never claim to.

The next message was from Holden, sounding unusually upset. “Roan, as soon as you get this, I need you to come over. I don’t care what time it is. I have a problem and only you can handle it.”

Roan was a little surprised he didn’t add, “Help me Obie-Wan, you’re my only hope,” but that was probably too geeky for him. He called Holden but only got his machine, so he hung up without leaving a message. If he wasn’t in jail - and he didn’t ask for bail money - something strange was going on. Since sleep was out of the question, he decided to go ahead and check it out.

He’d been hoping there was more news from the crime scene, but obviously not. When he left, they’d tentatively identified the homeowner as Curtis Bowles, but that didn’t mean he was the victim or one of the missing roommates; he could have been subletting. And considering the condition of the corpse, it could be days or even weeks before a proper identification could be made. Poor bastard.

He dressed hurriedly and ventured back out into the underwater world. He wished he’d stop having nightmares, especially about stupid shit. He probably needed to break down and see Doctor Rosenberg again. He could trust her not to turn him over to the first traveling freak show that came along.

He called Fiona from the car, as he had ample time to do it sitting at stoplights. He told her he’d be coming into the office today, but a bit later than usual. He left the message on her voice mail, as he was routed straight there. It wasn’t personal; Fiona hated answering her own phone. According to her, “It’s not like it’s ever anything good.” He couldn’t argue with that logic.

The codeine and beer combo had really kicked in now, beating his headache back to a dull and ignorable roar, but he know felt a little hollow eyed and light-headed, his hands and feet oddly warm. There was no way to win. He checked his eyes in the mirror, and wondered if Holden would notice he was on pills again. Oh, fuck it, he called him - he was just going to have to live with getting in him in whatever shape he was when he answered.

He had to knock twice. Well, the first time was a knock; after waiting a minute and getting no answer, he changed to pounding on the door. That got a response. “Hold your horses,” Holden snapped, his voice muffled by the door. He still sounded tired and cranky.

When he finally opened the door, Roan told him, “You called. Don’t get pissy at me.”

Holden stared at him with sleep blurry eyes, his mussed sable hair sticking up in all directions. “Yeah, I did, but give me a minute. I was up ’til five thirty.” He turned away, dry washing his face, leaving the door open, a tacit invitation inside. Roan took it, although not without some reservations.

He felt awkward, and not only because he always felt awkward around Holden since he’d seen him almost completely transform. This time he also felt awkward because Holden was dressed only in red boxer briefs, riding so low on his hips you could see a fringe of dark pubic hair in the front and a good dose of ass crack in the back. Holden had no sense of modesty so he wouldn’t actually care - you didn’t become a whore if you were actually shy about your body - but Roan found it too early in the day to face anyone half naked. Maybe he was getting prudish in his old age. What a horrible thought. Luckily, Holden padded into his small kitchen, and his counters hid him. “Want some coffee?”

“No thanks. What’s going on?”

Holden ran a hand through his hair, making it only slightly less messy, and nodded his head in the direction of his coffee table. “It’s right there.”

Roan looked as Holden continued to futz with the espresso machine, and he finally deduced that he must have been referring to the folded up newspaper. He sat down on his sofa and had a look.

On the front page was a large PR photo of a smiling man in his fifties, with a full head of hair almost as white as his supernaturally blinding Chiclet teeth, highlighted by a tan just a few degrees shy of George Hamilton orange. Roan recognized him as Joel Newberry, of the Newberry clan, a locally famous family. They owned channel four and a classical station, sponsored a boat race every year, and had a controlling interest in the advertising firm Armstrong Anderson (if there was a conflict of interest in this, no one mentioned it). Scanning the article, it said that Joel, 54, had died suddenly of a heart attack last night.

Roan scanned the rest of the front page, in case he was missing something else, but the only other articles were on rising gas prices, local soldiers killed in Afghanistan, and a dust up at the city council over an offensive email. He couldn’t imagine Holden being interested in any of this. “Is this about the dead rich guy?” he finally asked, giving up.

Holden snorted. “Not just a dead rich guy. There’s no fucking way he died of a heart attack. I want to hire you to find out how he really died.”

Roan scratched his head. Had the drugs kicked in extra hard, or had he actually heard that? “Umm, you knew Joel Newberry?”

“He was Trevor,” he said, pouring himself a cup of espresso. “One of my regulars.”

Okay, it was official: he was glad he was on drugs. “This guy? Trophy wife Newberry?”

“He wasn’t gay. I’d say he was bi, although he himself never used the term. He would tell me he thought the Greeks had the right idea, that a man could have another man to fool around with and not be considered gay. After all, our sex drives are more compatible than it is between a male and a female.”

“Sounds like justification from a weasel.”

He shot him a harsh look as he came out into his living room and collapsed on his loveseat, somehow not spilling a drop of coffee. “Be that as it may, he told me himself the last time we met up that he thought someone was trying to kill him.”

“And this wasn’t role playing?”

Holden gave him a surprisingly nasty look. “Are you going to let me tell my story, or would you rather be a wise ass?”

“I get a choice?” Before Holden could throw his coffee on him, he said, “Okay, I’m listening.”

“Right. He told me last time we met - Thursday - that he thought someone was trying to kill him, and he thought it was someone in his family. There was some kind of business deal and he was holding out, mainly ’cause he didn’t like it. He was getting nervous, though; he said the family was freezing him out, and then something happened, although he didn’t specify what, he just said it was something that made him think he might be in real danger. He told me who he was, Roan, he gave me his real name - not that I hadn’t already figured it out, but hey, part of the hooker gig is playing dumb - and the number to his private line. He told me if I hadn’t heard from him in a week, to call the number. Three days later, he’s dead. Coincidence?”

Oh, he could talk now? “Possibly. Guys, especially in their fifties, drop dead of heart attacks all the time. If he was paranoid, tension could have predisposed him to a cardiac incident.”

“Don’t give me the party line. He was as healthy as an ox; he said he got his insurance mandated physical a month ago and he was as healthy as I am. They said he had the heart of a twenty five year old.”

“Occasionally they get heart attacks too.”

Holden glared at him.

Roan threw up his hands. “Okay, fine, I’m just saying that he could have actually died of a heart attack, and it might be unconnected to what he told you. Isn’t it possible that he was indeed paranoid?”

“No. I’ve known him for almost two years, Roan, and I knew what he was like. He wasn’t paranoid. Irresponsible, egotistical? Sure. Not paranoid and jumping at shadows. C’mon, Roan, how desperate does a guy have to be to trust his rent boy? Even you have to admit that’s an extreme level of desperation.”

It was, but he wasn‘t ready to acknowledge the point. “Two years? And his wife never caught on?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, right.” Joel seemed to swap trophy wives like they were last year’s Jaguars. “What number was he on?”

“Of wives? Five. He only married Cherry four and a half months ago.”

“Cherry,” he repeated, rolling his eyes. Now it wasn’t anyone’s fault what their parents named them - look at him, he was Roan, a reddish brown hue mainly associated with horses - but people who named their kids after fruit were just asking for a punch in the mouth. Add to that her name was now Cherry Newberry, and she sounded like she was a character in a children‘s cartoon - or a porno. Funny how that worked. “How old is she?”

“According to the paper, twenty four.”

“Jesus.” Joel was old enough to have been her dad. That was just fucking creepy. He didn’t care if it was a straight relationship or a gay one: if you dated someone young enough to have been your child, you gave him a serious case of the heebie jeebies. “You don’t think balancing a hot young wife and a studly male prostitute wasn’t too much for his ticker?”

“Are you going to stop being an asshole?”

“I don’t see that there’s much of a case here, Holden. I’d be lucky to get any access anywhere, and it seems rather pointless. A heart attack seems reasonable to his age and lifestyle. Doctors miss things; they’re human. Just because he was paranoid only meant he sensed there was something wrong. He just wasn’t looking in the right place.”

He took a sip of his espresso and sighed heavily. “Would you please look into it for me?”

“Is this gonna be a guilt thing?”

“You bet your sweet ass it’s gonna be.”

“Fuck. Fine. But if I get nowhere in five working days you’ll have to find another chump.”

“Oh come on. If I can get your lion sense tingling, you won’t let this go.”

“If I hear one more superhero reference, I’m going to go on a shooting spree.”

Holden levered himself up from the sofa, and this time he hitched up his shorts as he walked back to the kitchen. “The cops are still calling you Batman?”

“All the fucking time. If someone else asks me how Robin is, I’m going to break their jaw.”

Holden went to his fridge and rooted around in it for a minute. “Oh, come now. You can have fun with it. Besides, at least they’re not calling you Batgirl.”

“I’ve gotten that too, thank you very much. But not to my face.”

“Of course not to your face; you’re Batman.” When he turned around, he gave him his patented shit eating grin. Roan gave him the finger in response.

He returned to the loveseat, but before plopping down, he tossed Roan a small stack of money held together by a rubber band. It was rather cold. “You keep cash in your fridge?” He looked at the stack, rifled the edge, did a bit of math. A thousand dollars? Goddamn, he really should become a whore.

“In a South Beach Diet sandwich box,” he acknowledged. “Have you ever had one of those damn things? They’re clearly made of recycled cardboard. Nobody is idiotic enough to want one, so I figured it was as theft proof as a safe.”

“You’re on the South Beach Diet? Isn’t that very three years ago?”

“I don’t diet. I unfortunately had one at a friend’s place. But if you were a thief, would you grab it?”

“God no. Your secret’s safe with me.” He held up the stack of money, and asked, “Are you sure you want to waste your money this way?”

“It’s not a waste. Something’s rotten in Denmark, Horatio. I need you to find out what.”

“I don’t want to be Horatio. He died.”

Holden rolled his eyes. “It was Hamlet. Everybody died.”

He had a point. Roan wondered who else was going to die before the intermission break.

Chen wasn’t taking her calls right now. Z got routed to a functionary named McCallum, who had his knickers in a twist over how shot up the guys in the woods were (and they didn’t find their being bound with hockey tape very amusing either). After asking how the Eurotrash dirt bags ended up getting so perforated with bullets, she finally told him, “They got in my way.” Did he think she was out in the woods for fun?

He sounded flustered for a moment, but then got back on track with the usual “I don’t know how they do things in MI-6, but -” which she’d heard in some form or another a hundred times. She’d even heard it from MI-6.

Shan took the time to change clothes, coming back into the living room wearing jeans not spattered with blood, and the t-shirt she got him for his birthday, the one with the happy bar of soap proclaiming “Rub me on your butt!” It fit like one of his bouncer t-shirts, meaning so tight you could watch him digest food, but that showed off his impressive musculature and made people cower around him, no matter what his shirt said. She pretended not to notice him get a soda from the fridge to take his pills with as she busied herself with ignoring McCallum and calling things up on the laptop.

After reminding her of Canadian law for the second time, she angrily pointed out that she was supposed to be working beyond the law, as this was all off the books - or had they forgotten their own stupid fucking rules already? He thought she was being “hostile”. “No, hostile is this,” she replied, slamming the phone down.

“You’ve worked in customer service, haven’t you?” Shan asked.

“I’m the patron saint of asshats.”

He choked a bit on his soda, to the point where he had to turn towards the sink, as he’d snorted some up his nose. She gave him a moment, then asked, “You okay, mate?”

He waved a hand at her, then said, “Yeah, just warn me next time.” His phone rang, but they both ignored it.

A little illegal poking around had turned something up. Namely that Oswald and Six, under their pseudonyms, were checked into the same posh hotel. She pointed this out to Shan as he sat next to her on the sofa, although he was careful to stay on the edge. She didn’t care about the blood stains; she’d had worse. “Umm, aren’t these records private?”

“What’s your point?”

He scowled at her, then shook his head, dismissing it. “Fine, okay, forgot who I was talking to for a second. What does this mean? Besides them liking four star hotels.”

“It means we can pay them a visit. But we should probably take them on hand to hand.”

Shan gave her a look that was half pleasant surprise, and half trepidation. “No more guns?”

“I’d rather not use ‘em in the hotel if we don’t hafta. It’ll bring way too much attention that CSIS can sort out, but that we really don’t need.” But now she had a real quandary. Six had the mad on for her, and she wanted to deal with him once and for all, but Oswald was a real piece of work. Killing was easy, Six had done it and she had done it as a teenager, but when it came down to it he wasn’t very good at it. Oswald was a real pro - his paycheck and his survival had depended on his ability to rip out his fellow man’s throat with his teeth. He was a trained killer, and Shan, as big and strong as he was, couldn’t compete with that level of psychopathic ruthlessness, even though he used to play hockey.

She could. She was a trained killer as well. Oswald wasn’t the only one who had learned how to rip the throat out of his fellow man with his teeth. She wanted to put down Six, it would have been fitting, but Oswald would probably kill Shan. She had to take the psycho; she had to leave nutball Six to Shan.

She pointed out Six’s hotel room number and told him, “This is your guy. He probably can’t fight well, but he’s a major league asshole. If he can shoot you, he will. Don’t let him go for a weapon; cripple him immediately.”

Shan looked troubled, but saluted nevertheless. “So you get Bob, eh? Insurance salesman Bob. What’s his deal?”

“He killed an entire village in Eritrea.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Is that near New Brunswick?”

“A bit further South.”

“Ah.” He paused again. “You should probably take a gun.”

“Don’t worry, I can handle him.” Or at least she hoped so.

Now would be a really bad time to discover she was rusty.

***

They swung by her place so she could grab some back up weapons, then went to a car rental place and rented a bland, average looking car, with the only vaguely distinguishing features being tinted windows. They parked down the street from the hotel where Six and Oswald had holed up, and she called their rooms from her cell to confirm they weren’t there (or at least weren’t answering their phones). She then watched the front of the hotel with binoculars, waiting for them to either leave or return.

After a while, Shan said, “So, the plan is we beat the shit out of these guys?”

“And call in the CSIS, yeah.”

Shan sat in the passenger seat, munching his apple for a minute. He took huge bites, ones that she thought could choke a moose, but he seemed to have no problems with it. He continued to eat in a mostly nauseatingly healthy fashion, to keep up his physique. She, on the other hand, had just downed four Excedrin and a Red Bull with a Snickers. Hey, it killed the pain in her head, she wasn’t about to start complaining. “Seems a little … basic, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but fancy’s for losers.”

“It just seems like general jackassery.”

“I worked with him once.”

“Who?”

“General Jackassery. He was really more of a dick.”

He scowled at her. “Very funny. This is serious shit, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we treat it as such?”

“Why? Shit’s miserable enough as it is. Why mope about it?”

He didn’t have anything to say that, so he just shrugged and sank back in his seat.

It was almost an hour - an incredibly boring hour - when she spotted Oswald entering the hotel, wearing an army surplus jacket a size too large for him, shoulders slouched like he was in a rotten mood. “Looks like I’m up,” she told Shan, handing him the binoculars. “You know what your guy looks like, right?”

‘Yeah. But shouldn’t I come with you, as back up?”

“What if Six arrives? No, you stay here. I can take this fucko, really. I have a surprise for him.”

He grinned. “You did bring a gun.”

“Something like that. Good luck.”

She got out of the car and casually crossed the street, walking around to the back of the hotel, where she had already found the employee entrance. A twenty slipped to one of the kitchen staff got her let in, no problem. She already knew what room he was in, so all she had to do was find the nearest elevator and duck inside.

She reached inside her pants pocket and gripped the ka-bar she had stashed there. She could stun him, but that almost seemed too kind, and besides, some of those steroid monstrosities could shake off a stun. No, she had to go for the immediate paralyzation or kill; Oswald was too dangerous to mess around with for too long.

As the elevator door opened on his floor, she hoped she wasn’t rusty.

The first shot pinged off the hood, making both Z and Shan duck behind their open doors. Other shots went wide, although one cracked the windshield with a sound like rime creaking under the heat of the morning sun.

“You got a lotta nerve, you stupid bitch!” a man roared from the shack.

Shan looked at her across the seat. “A friend of yours?”

“People love me,” Z replied, as she fired back blindly with one of the nines. She wasn’t trying to hit anything, just trying to make him stop shooting for a second so she could gauge where he was firing from.

“You’re a people person,” Shan agreed. “Can I surrender?”

“I’d let ya, but I bet they’ll think it’s a trap.”

“What if I swore it wasn’t?” He ducked even lower as bullets shattered the passenger side window above him.

“I doubt they’d believe you.” From what she’d been able to tell, muzzle flashes seemed to be emanating from a crack beside the door. Not the door, which was shut, but a crack between boards, wide enough to shave a gun barrel in. Did they think that was going to save them? “Cover me. I’m gonna make a run for the door.”

“Umm … I really don’t wanna shoot anybody.”

“Just shoot towards the shed. You probably couldn’t shoot anyone from here anyways.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would you just fucking shoot already?”

He did, very randomly, almost missing the shed entirely, and she fired randomly with one of the nine millimeters as she ran in a crouch towards the shed. She made it without getting shot, but she suspected that she’d have been okay even if Shan hadn’t covered her. The crack they were shooting through was too narrow; they didn’t have much range or maneuverability. It was like having a huge blind spot, but worse than that: an obvious blind spot.

She waited for the pause after a shot, the barely audible click of someone cocking their gun, and put the shotgun up against the crack and pulled the trigger. As usual with a shotgun, it was explosively loud compared to the other guns, and it blew a huge hole in the wall, causing someone inside to yell “Holy fuck!” After pulling the trigger, Z quickly spun back to where she had been and ducked down, in case someone started shooting through the wall.

But no one did, not until she got back beside the flimsy door, and their shots were so far off target that they might as well have been lobbing frozen peas at them. Shan, for his part, had moved around to the other side of the car, staying as low as he could, which was difficult since he was such a big guy. Still, they never came close to shooting him.

She threw open the door but stood aside, letting the idiots fire blindly out and around the door, occasionally shooting randomly inside with one of the nines to encourage them firing back. Her ears grew accustomed to the small explosions of sound, so she was able to hear the familiar sounds of hasty reloading.

It was only then that she swung into the doorway, shotgun braced against her hip. “First guy to move gets his guts splattered on the wall.”

There were two guys in the shack, which was an odd collection of valuable car parts and shiny hubcaps amidst straggly pot plants on wooden shelves that looked like they could give way at any moment. There was also a lumpy love seat with worn spots and a brown plaid pattern like a series of accidents, which one of the guys was using as a makeshift cover. The other guy was kneeling on the floor near the crack, beside a knocked over coffee table, his arm visibly bleeding from either a bullet wound or a shrapnel wound. Both were white and slightly dopey looking; older too, and doughy. Not White Wolf, or at least not from the mercenary division. Did they have a Human Resources department?

Shan came up behind her in the doorway, gun out. “So, is the bad guy here?”

“Six? No, not unless he’s really let himself go. You dropping those guns, boys, or do I hafta make an example outta one of you?”

The guys reluctantly dropped their guns with loud clunks. Maybe they were hoping for accidental discharges that would shoot her in the foot, but it didn’t happen. “Good. Who are you dickheads?”

“Fuck off, limey,” the guy on the floor spat.

“Limey?” Shan repeated with a scoff. “Dude, she’s a dingo. Or whatever the nickname for Aussies is.”

“I think it’s koala fucker.” Z told him.

Shan looked at her in surprise. “Is it?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea. I’m guessing.”

“Huh. Might work, I suppose.”

“Are you both fucking retarded?” the guy on the floor said irritably, hand over the wound on his opposite arm, so Z couldn’t tell what had injured him.

She motioned the guy over from the love seat, and reluctantly he stepped out from behind the furniture (like it would have protected him from a shotgun blast). “Who are you assholes? You’re not White Wolf.”

“We’re nobody, okay?” the guy on the floor said irritably. Shan collected their dropped guns, and he watched him closely. Z was actually hoping the idiot would jump him, because Shan would make short work of him. He was great at hand to hand combat. He must have figured he was too big for him, because the guy remained where he was.

“Well, I can tell by the accent you’re Canadian. So what are you, stringers?”

The guy on the floor looked at her blankly. He had mouse brown hair that looked liked a collapsed ski lift, sagging on his forehead like it was slowly falling off a cliff. “What the fuck’s a stringer?”

“And you called us retarded?” Shan exclaimed.

“Where’s Six?” She asked, knowing it was a long shot. The reason they’d bring these guys on board was precisely because they knew nothing. They were the weak link in the information chain, and you couldn’t drag information out of a person who genuinely knew nothing at all.

“Six?” Said the uninjured guy. “What the fuck kinda name is that?” They were both pudgy white guys, like men made out of boiled potatoes, but this one had hair the color of smoker’s teeth, so thin in places on top of his head he had a bit of a sunburn. His eyes were small and squinty, barely eyes at all in his creased red face.

“Who’s your boss?” she asked, and then quickly amended, “In this operation, not in the junkyard.”

The sunburned guy rolled his eyes. “It’s not a junkyard, okay? It’s an auto yard. The sign says so!”

“Whatever. Who paid you to shoot at me?”

Mr. Sunburn shrugged and then shook his head, his general attitude one of annoyed boredom. “We just did some paperwork for these Eurotrash guys. They said they were Interpol. And they said you were a terrorist.”

“A terrorist? Me? Since when the fuck do women who aren’t trapped in burqas work for Al Qaeda?”

“They said you were North Korean.”

Z shook her head, scowling in disgust. She was only part Asian, and a rather small part at that. And she was part Japanese, not Korean! Racist assholes thinking all Asians looked alike. It figured Six would latch onto that. Shan laughed.

“Yeah, I’m from the Australian part of North Korea,” she said, deadpan. “Where they have the kangaroos.”

The wounded guy looked up at her curiously. “They got kangaroos in North Korea?”

She glared down at him in disgust - was anyone that stupid? - while sunburn clicked his tongue and exclaimed, “No, ya idiot, she was bein’ sarcastic.”

“Trust me, Interpol wouldn’t need you to cook up fake passports for them, and I’ve never even been to North Korea. So give me everything you got on them.”

The idiot and the sunburned guy exchanged a glance before sunburn said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You keep a file on these guys so if they need another one, you don’t have to mess with getting another photo or any stats. So now, where is it?”

Again, the morons exchanged a glance. Didn’t they know that was a giveaway? It was a way of saying, “Yes, I’m guilty. Please take me away, Mr. Officer Man” without ever saying a word.

Sunburn sighed and turned away. “Oh, what the fuck.”

“Dude,” the wounded guy said. “You can’t.”

“Yes I can. She’s got a look in her eye like my ex-wife.”

“So?”

“So, I think she’ll kill us all if we don‘t do what she says.” Sunburn pried up a loose floorboard, and Z was watching him closely to make sure he wasn’t going for a weapon. He wasn’t; the only thing in the hollow piece of floor, besides a variety of passport sleeves, was a battered laptop computer.

Z quietly thanked this dumb shit’s ex-wife.

****

Armin Bauer.

Z looked at the file, showing Six’s dead eyed stare. He gave his home address as a parking lot across from the CN Tower, but hey, if they were examining his documents closely he was in deep shit anyways. No harm in giving a phony address as his residence in Canada.

Shan took a look at him, and dramatically shuddered. “Crap in a hat, Z, he looks like a young Hannibal Lecter.”

“You’re not far off.” Oswald had assumed the alias of Robert Stevens, the blandest name imaginable. Bob Stevens - now how could that be the name of a mercenary who could kill you with a toothpick? You’d think he was the last person on Earth to be a coldblooded killer. Unless you looked him in the eyes and realized that he was dead from the neck down.

Shan was quiet for a long time, long enough that she was sure he’d had an episode at some point and recovered, and then finally said, “I’m guessing you didn’t tell me all there is to know about this whole thing.”

“You’d guess right.” How could she lie now?

“Is it that bad? I mean … these guys really are killers, aren’t they? What I said to those guys back in my apartment wasn’t just bullshit. They meant to kill me.”

“Yes.”

He hissed a sigh out through his teeth. “Fucking hell. I thought it was hyper … hyper … hyperthyroid.”

“Hyperbole,” she corrected automatically.

“Yeah, that. So why the hell are we going back there?!”

“’Cause I need to talk to somebody. We know who they are, but not where they are. I need more intell.” They had taken a car from the auto junkyard, an old Dodge Charger that needed a paint job, new rear tires, and a bumper to take the place of the missing one, but at least it ran. Oh sure, the flywheel made a scraping noise like someone trying to get burnt residue off the bottom of a pan with a fork, but they weren’t keeping it forever.

“That explains nothing. You can call from the bus station.”

“They won’t be here. You survived the cleaners; it will be assumed you are on the run. Only an idiot would come back here.”

“So now we’re idiots.”

“No, we’re doing an idiotic thing because it’s actually smart. It’s the last place they’ll look. Besides my place.”

Shan looked blankly through the windshield for a moment, scratching his head quite close to his brain surgery scar. “I don’t get you at all. Shouldn’t we be goin’ to the cops?”

“I’ve told you, we’re beyond the cops now. But don’t worry, we’re not alone. It just seems like it.”

“Has it occurred to you that the guys could be still there, unconscious?”

She shook her head as she swung the Charger into the parking lot of Shan’s apartment building. “The Zamboni’s been through.”

“Huh?”

She killed the engine, which made a ticking noise for about half a minute. “I thought you played hockey, mate.”

Shan winced and rubbed his forehead, like she was paining him. “Did I have a seizure, or does this not make sense?”

“It makes sense, trust me.” With that, she got out of the car, and headed for his ground floor apartment. Shan reluctantly followed, and when they neared his door, he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Look, let me go in first, okay? Just in case.”

She pulled up her t-shirt, just enough to reveal the butt of the nine she had slipped into the waist of her jeans. “I should go just in case, don’t you think?”

He frowned, but reluctantly let her go ahead. Shan had a strange sense of chivalry, which she almost never encountered, certainly not amongst the jock types. You could argue that it was due to his head injury, but Z figured it was because he was raised right. Never mind that he was an American from Michigan who had spent almost all of his childhood playing sports; he was a genuinely nice guy, a very rare breed. She was kind of sorry she was warping him, making him more and more cynical. At least it was occurring slowly.

There was some blood on the edge of his door, and a bit of denting, but she opened his apartment to reveal … nothing.

Well, okay, that wasn’t true. There was his apartment furniture, his television still on but the volume muted, the coffee table overturned and a couple of magazines scattered on the floor, almost covering the large dark spot of blood on the carpet.

Shan looked in the place with growing surprise, his jaw going slack. “What the fuck ..?”

“See? The Zamboni’s cleaned the place up.” When she called Chen to tell her about the Eurotrash in the woods, she also told her that Shan’s place needed “clearing”. It wouldn’t have taken them long. Unbeknownst to him, Shan’s place had been under surveillance since she’d hammered out a deal with Canadian Intelligence.

Yeah okay, he was a civilian and one very adept at beating a punk ass bitch down, but no one wanted to see him hurt. But she’d be damned if she’d ever tell him she’d had him “protected” all along. He’d never take it in a good way.

And really, she couldn’t blame him for that. She wouldn’t have liked it either.

In the end, she decided that she could kill in front of Shan, just not in any way that suggested execution style. Which left her with a bit of problem, because these guys just weren’t resisting.

But she did agree to keep in touch with Chen, and hadn’t bothered for long enough that CSIS were probably starting to doubt her intentions. At least Shan had some hockey tape in his Jeep. They used it to tape the thugs’ wrists behind their back, and taped their ankles together up to their calves. Just because he was bleeding so much, Shan taped up the bullet wounded knee of the more severely injured guy. Shan advised him to tell the doctors not to just rip it off as they might take skin with it, but for his kind advice he got a hearty fuck you. So they both agreed that the doctor should rip off the tape as hard as humanly possible.

She then called Chen and told her where to pick up these assclowns, and went through their car for clues.

They ended up having to do some math. The rental papers in the glove compartment listed the original mileage of the car, and then they noted what it was now, and subtracted the amount of miles it would take to get here from Vancouver. (Shan knew, since he drove it and wasn’t unconscious in the trunk of a car at the time.) With the amount of mileage left over, they tried to figure out where these numbnuts may have come from. Because they ran low on ideas, she called Chen and consulted her. Chen, for her part, thought they were both fucking nuts.

Chen still found them four potential sites. The best looked to be an auto junkyard that was suspected of being a chop shop as well as a source for illegal passports. Second best was a low rent bar; third best was a park. The last was a mall, which was highly unlikely, and yet would be good if you wanted to get lost in a crowd. Also, it had a “sporting goods” (read: gun) store, in case they needed to load up with some new shit in a hurry.

As soon as she hung up, she started the rental car and followed Shan’s instructions to get back to the road. “How long was I out?” Shan asked. He was attempting to put the safety back on the gun he grabbed, and he wasn’t doing well.

“Not long.”

“Are you sure? I seemed to have missed a shoot out.”

“There wasn’t a shoot out; I prevented one by shooting them in the back. Give me something with repeat action, and I can take out an entire platoon by shooting them in the back. It’s cowardly, but a hell of a time saver.”

Shan gave her a suspicious look, but seemed to accept that and let it go. The entire key to their relationship was his willingness to let shit go. “So, is your name actually Zero?”

“Zero’s a number, not a name.”

“That’s what I said! But those guys back at my apartment said that you changed your name to it in England or something. It seemed improbable, and yet, still like something you’d do.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“So, are you named Zero?”

She glanced at him sidelong, trying to gauge his response. “Would you like it to be?”

He stared at her in surprise. “It’s an option?”

She shrugged. “Sure, why not? I can always use a new name.”

He looked briefly confused. “So it’s not your name?”

She shrugged. “It could be.” There had to be a limit to how much she revealed to him. It was really better for him, although he would probably object to that.

He frowned at her, dark brows becoming stark lines over his icy blue eyes. “Why won’t you tell me your name? I’ve known you for years. I’ve looked down the barrels of more guns than …” He made a vague motion with his hand, one that went on longer than it should have, and he had a desperate look in his eye. His transitory aphasia was making itself known once more.

“Sorry mate, but I have no idea what word you were goin’ for there. Hot dinners? Than in your entire life? I’m sorry, I never meant to drag you into all that shit.”

It took him another minute, but he finally got his voice and mind back on track. “Okay, doesn’t matter. My point was - is - I’ve never known your real name. Don’t I deserve to know what it is by now? I won’t blab.”

She sighed, trying not to be too obvious about it. Telling him there were things he was still better off not knowing sounded condescending, although it wasn’t intended that way. So she just skipped that part. “I haven’t had a real name for years, Shan.”

“Bullshit. Your parents named you, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but I got rid of that name around the time they got rid of me. I didn’t want it, and they didn’t want me. We were even. Ever since then, I just pick up names and throw them away when I don’t need them anymore.”

“What do you mean they got rid of you? Your parents put you up for adoption or something?”

“Naw. By then I was too old. My mother just told me to get out, and I did. I left my name at the door. A name is nothing, a designation, but it’s not you. It’s just somethin’ to write on the death certificate.”

He shook his head in despair and rubbed his eyes. “Are you wanted by some government?”

“America, and probably Egypt. I’m not so sure about Syria or Serbia; time and regimes change, you know. Hard to keep track.”

Shan stared at her for a very long moment, but she deliberately avoided his gaze. “You’re making that up.”

She simply shrugged. She wasn’t - well, maybe Serbia; was that even a country anymore? - but it didn’t matter.

“Are you saying if I Google your real name, I’ll find you on a wanted list?”

“No, under a coupla different names. Told ya, I change ‘em all the time.”

He raised his hands up and let them fall on his lap, a gesture of frustrated surrender. “Either you’re making this shit up to freak me out, or you’re just trying to freak me out, period.”

“No mate, swear I’m not. I’m just bein’ honest. Maybe ‘cause of the head injury.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Maybe we should stop at an ER first?”

“Can’t. We’re already here.” She nodded down the road at a large chain link fence topped with looping curls of barbed wire. There was a sign so dirty you could barely see “Aaron’s Auto Hauling & Recycling” scrawled on it, or the hours of operation written underneath. She idled the car on the cracked asphalt ribbon some eight meters away from the chained and padlocked gate. It looked dark amongst the hulking hills of junked car bodies and the scree of loose parts, although there seemed to be a wan yellow light where she imagined the main building to be. “So what’s wrong with this picture?”

Shan studied the gate with well hidden but still obvious alarm on his face. “I … don’t know. They’re poor housekeepers?”

“It’s on the sign, right above the “Closed Sundays” line.”

He leaned forward, squinting his eyes to see through the built up dirt and grime. “Umm … “Open 11 to 8 Six Days A Week”.”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Seven twenty.” She waited for him to put two and two together, and while he did, she reached in the duffle bag they found on the floor of the back seat. It contained a professionally sawed off shotgun, loaded, with several spare shells. Now this was a proper gun, not a pussy nine millimeter. Oh, well, they were fine for some people, but she wanted something guaranteed to put someone down for a long time. She laid her wonderfully phallic gun across her lap, barrel pointed towards her car door, ready for action. “They may have closed early for some good reason.”

“Maybe, but it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” She started backing the car up, heading back down the small choppy road until she came to the intersection where it met the paved street.

“We leaving?”

“No, we’re gaining momentum.” She confirmed he was wearing his seatbelt, then gunned the engine before pushing the gas pedal down as far as it would go. Shan let out a surprised yelp and braced himself, hands wedged up against the dashboard, as the car met the gate.

The impact was a jarring thud accompanied by the scream of twisted metal and the soft noise of shattering headlights, but the barrier gave, the chain snapping and the gates swinging open as the damaged car roared into the wrecking yard. One of the front tires popped, possibly on a piece of metal sticking down from the now crumpled front end - she felt the head of the car going soft, the traction mushy and the steering sluggish - but she simply let up on the accelerator and wrestled the beast into some semblance of direction, refusing to lose control now.

The car fishtailed on the hard packed dirt, the rear slamming into one of the dead car cairns and causing an avalanche of small parts in their wake as she navigated the path between the car corpse hills, headed towards what now resolved itself into a low shack like building with a tar paper roof. “You’re fucking crazy,” Shan shouted, as the car was now rattling and making noises that suggested imminent death. (But what the fuck did she care? It wasn’t her rental.) She only grinned, because pronouncements like that always made her laugh. Of course she was crazy - she used to work for the government, didn’t she? That was pretty much a prerequisite.

She slued the car to a stop just beyond the shed, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that looked like smoke. As she killed the engine, it made a noise that could have been interpreted fairly as a death rattle.

Shan stared at her in wild eyed horror. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me?”

“What, and spoil the surprise?”

He scowled at her, not in the mood for jokes. “What if these people are innocent?”

“Then I’ll apologize,” she said, opening her door and sliding out, grabbing the shotgun and letting it hang next to her leg.

But it turned out there was no need for apologies. Shan had barely opened his door when the shooting

****

1 - Signify

Everyone had at least some dirty little secrets that you hid from your boyfriend or girlfriend; that was to be expected. But some were just honestly unbelievable.

“You really think I’m letting you off the hook for this?” Roan asked, slipping under the sheets. Dylan turned over on his back to face him, scowling sourly.

“You are such a dick sometimes.”

(more…)

Four Days Earlier

It was so weird to see Shan with kids. It was even odder to see that they looked up to him.

Z was sitting in what would probably be considered the “cheap seats”, if the Rec Center could be said to have cheap seats. It gave her not only a good look at the skating rink, but at the few people in the seats who were sitting watching, presumably parents and family members ready to take the kids home when this was all over. Z found, even after a short amount of surveillance, that she could pick out different types amongst the people.

The “hockey dads” - guys who took it way too fucking seriously - all sat with rigid postures or clenched fists, acting like every kid who stumbled on the ice or took bad potshots at the net were committing some grievous sin. The “hockey moms” - basically chauffeurs - usually looked tired and distracted, although some did other things, such as read mass market paperbacks or knit scarves. The older brothers or sisters sent to pick up their little brother (or sister - Shan had a couple girls on his team, including a pudgy one who was actually an impressive brick wall of a goaltender) usually texted or watched or listened to something on their phone or iPod, their postures reflecting boredom. The older brothers who had played hockey and cared about it did nothing but watch. There was one hockey mom, a Korean woman in her early thirties, who never watched her kid but watched Shan instead, with an almost predatory gaze. He never believed Z when she said that mom wanted to jump his bones, but clearly she did - if it wasn’t for the presence of the kids, she’d have probably tackled him on the rink. Was it wrong that Z would have paid cash to see it?

Shan had haphazardly put on goalie gear (the leg pads and the helmet, but it didn’t look like he was wearing any other padding - maybe he knew they’d never be able to lift a puck into his midsection), and was taking pucks that his kids shot at him. Or towards the net, which was actually a different thing (about one of three kids actually hit him; the rest shanked pucks in wildly variant directions). But Shan always shouted out compliments and encouragement, no matter how far off the mark they were. He was very good with the kids, giving him a “gentle giant” mystique, which made her feel bad for always embroiling him in violent shit, until she recalled that Shan always liked being involved in the violent shit. Oh, he didn’t like hurting people, but he liked the excitement. He was a thrill junkie, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

She was marveling that Shan had a kid named Rajiv on his squad when a woman suddenly appeared in the aisle beside her. She was an older middle aged Asian woman, dressed in a surprisingly neat and conservative dark pantsuit, with a gold silk scarf knotted around her neck to add a little color. Her black hair was cut short and somewhat severe, accidentally emphasizing the roundness of her face. “Excuse me, do you have the time?” she asked.

Z didn’t even look at her watch. “Eight fifteen.” That wasn’t right, but it wasn’t supposed to be. That was the code.

The woman who was her contact with the CSIS, Elena Chen, sat down in the threadbare seat beside her and sighed. “I got held up in traffic. I forgot they were still doing road work.”

“So much for Canadian Intelligence.”

Z noticed her scowl out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t acknowledge it. After a moment, Chen stopped giving it to her. “I understand you don’t want to work with us, but you’re on our soil. If an MI-6 op wants to go off, we have to be involved.”

“I’m just a freelancer. I don’t want to be involved in this at all.”

“But here you are.” They sat in silence for a moment, before Chen said, “So that’s the civilian, Shane Shanahan. He’s a goalie? Well, that explains the brain damage.”

“He’s good, and he’s in. He won’t compromise anything.”

“Did you know I had never heard of petit mal? I had to Google it. And I’m still not sure I know what it means.”

“Look at him. He can handle his shit.”

She stared at him skeptically, like he was a pre-packaged sandwich with a dubious expiration date. “How much does he weigh?”

“Two twenty five, nearly all muscle. I don’t think he has any fat on him.”

She let out a low whistle. “So this and being a bouncer keeps him in shape?”

“He works out a bit. He has no social life. He’s afraid of having seizures in places where you would normally meet people: bars, restaurants, clubs. Too much light and noise contrast can trigger an episode.”

“Doesn’t he work at a club?”

“Yeah, but outside. He only goes in when he’s called for.”

There was a loud crack as a puck hit the Plexiglas behind the rink hard, and while some of the spectators in that area ducked (as if breaking was an actual possibility), Shan seemed unmoved, and actually called out, “Nice slapshot, Scotty! But take a moment to find your target first, okay?” That had missed Shan so badly that the kid might as well have been shooting for the other end of the rink. He would probably get better, but she bet Scotty didn’t have a future as a sniper.

“Hockey players have great bodies,” Chen said, apropos of nothing.

“Really?” Z wondered where this tangent was going.

“Oh yeah. Their faces are often a horror show, but slap a paper bag on their heads and strip ‘em, and they’re some of the best looking straight guys around. Really hard, lean bodies.”

Now Z got it. Chen was joining that one hockey mom who was wondering what Shan was packing under that jersey. “I wouldn’t know. You used to date one?”

“I grew up in Canada. So, yes. And they’re jerks, you know - most jocks are jerks. But nice to look at.”

Z only nodded, swallowing back her initial response, which was all men - jocks or not - were jerks. Women were hardly better. But that was cynical enough to be revealing of her personality, so she didn’t say it. “He’s had a dry spell for a long time. You could probably take a crack at him if you want.”

Chen raised an eyebrow at her for that, scoffing. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m sure he can fight - when he’s conscious - but I’d rather assign you an agent who knows what we’re up against.”

“I don’t want a CSIS shadow, Chen. I don’t want to be followed, I don’t want to be teamed up with someone new. I’m willing to work with you, but on my terms.”

She let out a little huff of a sigh. “They warned me you were difficult. They undersold it.”

“They undersell it to other agencies, and oversell it in house. They’re British - they’re all drama queens.”

That got a small, humorous noise out of her. “They warned me you weren’t a team player.”

“I was always one of those agents you called in when things went tits up. I wasn’t supposed to be a team player.”

She noticed Chen was now studying her out of the corner of her eye, but Z kept her focus resolutely on the ice. “Were you a cleaner?”

Z didn’t answer. She felt that, honestly, there was no need to answer that question. She either figured it out for herself, or she didn’t.

****

Now

The one good thing about being in a forested area was all the good cover it provided. But Z wasn’t happy, mainly because it would have been ideal if she had a sniper rifle. But what she had were two nine millimeters, which weren’t ideal for distance. To use them with any decent accuracy, she’d have to be closer to her targets than she liked. Oh well, it was her fault for getting locked in the trunk of a car.

This was a part Shan wasn’t very good at: waiting. He was used to waiting in one sense, as being a bouncer meant standing around for most of the night, but at least he got paid for it, and there was a nearly endless parade of people - many drunk - to keep things interesting. Here there was nothing to do but birdwatch.

She suggested he take the Jeep and go until she called him, but he refused. He only moved it, hiding it behind cover, and then came to join her where she was waiting for Six to show up.

This went on for a while. Occasionally they talked, but not often. Nothing worthy of note was covered, mainly because Shan had no desire to discuss what he did to those guys back at his apartment. Yeah, he could fuck guys up royal, but unlike most jock boys, he didn’t like to talk about it. Probably because a bit of roughing up lead him to his brain injured status. When you paid the price, you couldn’t be proud of it.

Finally she heard the hum of tires on hard packed earth, and nudged Shan. “Get ready.”

But she knew from nudging him that he seemed almost excessively rigid, and glancing over she confirmed that he was staring out into space, eyes unfocused. Seizure time. Well, you know, he lasted longer than she thought he would. He’d done very well. But she was on her own right now, and she kind of expected that to happen at some point.

She liked working alone. Now she could do stuff and not have to explain it to him.

She laid him out, because, even though he was in a sitting position, she didn’t need him toppling over at an inopportune time.

The car, a white Ford Focus (clearly a rental), came to a stop almost directly parallel to her hiding spot, and she saw two big men in the car, neither Six. She watched them get out, visually assessing them. Both were huge guys, easily beyond six feet, with the approximate width of refrigerators. They walked with their arms slightly held out at their sides, as if the muscles were too bulky to deal with, and both were obviously strapped. Guns sure, but probably knives as well. Both were smoking, one a regular cigarette, one a Galois. She assumed they were both former White Wolf, although she didn’t discount the possibility that the guy with the Galois was simply a Euro-thug.

She let them start moving out towards the clearing before she came out of hiding and advanced in a low crouch towards the Focus. She hid behind it and waited for them to say something, but neither did. They were such pros that they knew you didn’t talk when approaching an unknown situation. She glanced up at the side mirror, making sure their huge backs were turned to her, before standing up and shooting at both of them, a gun in each hand like she was a hero in an action movie.

It was as cowardly as shit to shoot someone in the back. But when you were dealing with mercenaries, there was no room for honor.

Bullets punched through both of them, shock startling yelps out of them as sprays of blood burst from their shoulders, chests, and legs. She wasn’t going for the fatal neck shot (you couldn’t be sure of a fatal head shot with a nine from this distance, but if you took out the carotid or the jugular, it was goodnight nurse, even if you used nothing more than a ballpoint pen), not yet, but she was prepared to as soon as she deemed it necessary.

One was hurt worse than the other, and you could tell which one, because the one with more surface injuries reached for his gun even as he hit the ground. Ignoring the sick ache in her head, she ran up and kicked the gun out of his hand as he pulled it. “Don’t you fucking move,” she snapped. “Unless you want me to shoot your balls off too.”

It was the Galois smoking one who still had some fight left in him. The other thug was curled up in a fetal position, whining, “Fucking cunt, you shot my knee!”

Galois had bristly black hair and eyes as brown as mud, his gaze flat and full of hate. “I knew it was too good to be true. They said they had you wrapped up like a Christmas present.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking Santa Claus.” She was tempted to kick him in his bloody thigh, where a bullet had penetrated (but not exited; he was only bleeding from the back), but she had stepped back after kicking the gun from his hand and had no desire to get that close again. He may have had four or five bullets in him, but the wounds were all minor, and he was a big guy who knew his life was at stake. He would fight like hell to live, and she didn’t need to get into direct combat with him. “Where’s Six?”

He sneered up at her, his eyes showing that, in his mind, he was crunching numbers, trying to figure out if he could tackle her before she could put another bullet in him. Since he didn’t move, he must have figured the answer was no. “What the fuck, d’ya think this is 24 or somethin’? You torture me and I spill my guts? Fuck you! You’re gonna kill me anyways.”

“I’m doin’ you a favor, mate. I could kill you quick, or leave you to die slow. Up to you.”

“I’ve already made my choice.”

“So is this why torture never works?” Shan said, coming up, holding out another nine millimeter Glock he’d gotten from the Jeep. His eyes still had the glassy sheen of post seizure consciousness, that fuzzy half way glance that said he barely knew what planet he was on, but he was with it enough to come help her, which she had to give him credit for. See, CSIS would have been happier to have him as an agent; he was a team player all the way, and never let a friend go it alone, even when he was half-conscious and severely disoriented. Z knew she was living proof that it was hard to teach that kind of knee jerk loyalty - either you were born with the tendency or you weren’t.

“No. Torture never works ‘cause people make shit up. They tell you what you want to hear so you stop shovin’ wires up their urethra.”

Shan and the two men on the ground all winced. “Please tell me you just made that up,” Shan asked. His voice still had a thick, slow fuzz to it - again, typical post-seizure problem - but since the guys on the ground had presumably never heard him speak before, they’d never notice it. They’d just presume he was a slow talker.

“If that makes you sleep better, sure,” she offered. He gave her a wide eyed look of shock.

Galois craned his neck up at him. “Are you the brain damaged fuck buddy? Why ain’t you dead yet?”

“Fuck buddy?” Shan repeated in confusion.

“I think Six is the only guy in the world who thinks I’m straight.”

“Well, you do give off a kinda manly vibe.”

Galois snorted a laugh. He tried to smother it, but not very hard. She wasn’t going to hold it against Shan, because, hell, she knew she came off as pretty butch. It was part of the job.

Shan was getting better. He noticed the guy in the fetal position, holding his bloody kneecap and gritting his teeth against the pain. “Um, should we call an ambulance or something?”

“No.”

Galois now sneered up at Shan. “You don’t have the slightest fucking idea what she is, do you?”

Shan glanced at her, but not in a way that suggested he was surprised by the comment. Shan had made peace with never quite knowing who she was, and actually he seemed happier not knowing, adopting the theory ignorance was bliss, or at least a good friendship. He was correct. “What are we gonna do with ‘em, then?”

What a very good question. With Shan standing right here, an eyeball witness to whatever she did, what was she going to do with them?

How far did Shan’s loyalty go?

Five Days Earlier

She ended up meeting Shan at a Tim Horton’s not far from the rec center, after one of his afternoons coaching. His hair was still wet and combed back like he was a villain in an old Miami Vice episode, his face slightly flushed from exertion. It was obvious this gig tired him out and depleted his energy, and yet it was equally clear he got enough joy from it that quitting would rob him of his will to live. Z wondered how long he could keep it up before something had to give.

And if you weren’t sitting across from him, where you could see his brain surgery scar peeking out from under his hairline, you’d probably think he was the most normal guy in the universe. He was sitting there, eating a box of sour cream glazed Timbits and drinking the largest café mocha they had, while she picked listlessly at a cheese croissant and had already surrendered the coffee she had no intention of drinking to him. Caffeine was one of the few drugs he could have, and by god, he had it a lot.

He didn’t stop chewing or slurping a moment while she broke it down for him, his eyes almost fever bright in his reddish face. He’d probably only just taken his pills, as he usually took them afterwards. He nodded at everything she said, so casually she wasn’t sure he understood her. “You do hear what I’m sayin’, yeah? These guys are professional killers. They don’t leave witnesses, and they’ll likely kill anyone who gets in their way. I think it’d be best you leave town for a while.”

He chewed on a Timbit like a cow chewing its cud, and shook his head. “Nope. Stayin’ here.”

“Shan -”

“Why do you even try and warn me off? You know I’m too stupid to avoid a fight.” He flashed her a brief, crumb filled smile.

“Cut that out. You’re not stupid, you’re differently abled.”

“Ha.” He took a swig of his café mocha. “Do you really think I’d leave you alone to face off with a buncha bloodthirsty bastards? I mean, I know I should, but the guilt’d kill me. And by the time I came back, the game would be in progress, and I wouldn’t know the play, and I’d make things worse. So better I’m in at the beginning than back at the front.” He paused a moment, looking down at his Timbits. “At what point did I stop making sense?”

“I think after bloodthirsty bastards. But if it’s anything, I know what you were goin’ for.”

“You always know what I’m goin’ for. That’s why I like you, even though you regularly scare the shit out of me.”

“I scare the shit out of most people. Shows they have a sense of self-preservation. Speakin’ of which, I’m willing to buy you a ticket to Michigan to visit your family. I really think you should take it, mate.”

He shook his head vociferously. “My family is my lawyer brother, rich as shit and twice as smelly, and my mother, who has Alzheimer’s and is in the best home my brother decided to pay for. Last time I visited her, she had no idea who I was, and my brother and his anorexic Olsen twin of a wife treated me like I was retarded. I’m surprised they didn’t have a special padded helmet for me to wear around their house. I’d rather face assassins than them.”

“Sounds like my family.”

“They’re assassins?”

She snorted a laugh. “Might as well be.”

He nudged the box on the table, tacitly offering her one of the doughnut things, and she shook her head. She knew lots of people raved about them, but she’d never been much of a doughnut person.

She also knew she probably wouldn’t be able to talk Shan out of this - he was a big goofy Saint Bernard of a person, always eager to get in and help even when he didn’t understand the situation, and capable of great feats of strength even when you’d already written him off as a harmless goofball. In short, he’d have made a great hockey player or president of a minor Pacific island nation. Still, in good conscience - whatever shreds of one she had - she had to try. “Look, mate, these people have killed, and are always willing to do it again. Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Kill. I know I’ve told you never to aim a gun at someone you have no intention of killin’, but I also know you think I’m bein’ a weirdo.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“I know, but this time out you may be forced to use one.”

He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Why? Guns and other weapons are your strength, not mine. Mine’s hand to hand. I mean, you don’t play hockey and rugby for years without learning how to fuck someone up royal.”

“You played rugby?”

He nodded, chewing another Timbit. “During the off seasons. I liked to think it kept my stamina up when there were no rinks to skate at. Don’t know if it did or didn’t, but I could decapitate someone with my elbow.”

“Nice. Ever play a sport that didn’t involve physical violence?”

He looked out the window at the people walking by on the street, and he was so unfocused for so long that she thought maybe he’d had a seizure. But finally he looked back and said, “Volleyball.”

He had one. Imagine that. “Sometimes these guys know better than to try to go mano a mano with a big slice of guy like you. If I was comin’ up against you, I’d go for the distant take out, and that’s assuming I know nothing about you. I’m just goin’ on your size alone, mate.”

“But have you factored in the brain damage? Most people think I’m pathetic. That knocks about a foot off my height and about a hundred pounds off my weight.”

That was true, and she was counting on that. But how long would that last? “You’ll be able to use it once, maybe twice. But by then word will be gettin’ around, and you will be considered a legitimate target.”

“But that’s why you have my back, right? You’re the major enforcer anyways, I’m just the wing man.”

She sighed heavily. “Is it all sports metaphors with you?”

He shrugged. “It’s easiest.”

She felt herself sliding off the topic, as she often did around him. She wrestled it back under control. “Look, if you’re gonna stay, then we’d better come up with a plan.”

“A plan for what?”

“For when they come after you. They’re gonna come after me first, so I might not be able to help you right away. We need to be ready. You sure you wanna do this?”

He nodded before gulping down more coffee. “Just lay out the plan. With all this caffeine in me, I can’t help but remember it.”

She certainly hoped so. His life might depend on it.

*****

Now

The seat started to give.

She found she got a second wind as soon as she felt the give, and kicked harder. Finally the seat gave and crashed open into the body of the car. It was a relatively small car, so she was forced to squirm her way out of the trunk, but at least it didn’t smell like tires. It was still stuffy, though.

The ties were hard plastic, but they hadn’t done a thorough job of frisking her, and she still had her boot knife. She had to contort a bit to reach the knife and get it out, and then contort some more to actually slip the blade between the ties and saw through one. It made her feel better to get her feet free, although it didn’t help her one damn bit.

Getting the ties off her hands was another thing, but before struggling with that, she popped open a door for some fresh air, and a more unobstructed view of her surroundings. Which was about as helpful as not opening the door.

She was in some beater car in what looked like a scrub lot, something overgrown with Scotch broom and blackberry bushes, with a towering, slightly diseased looking pine tree blocking the car from wherever the road was. There was a road, though; she vaguely heard the noise of cars in the distance. This was an excellent place to dump a body.

But where the fuck was she? She could have been in some shithole part of Alberta for all she knew. And what was the plan here? They could have killed her while she was out - honestly, they should have; you didn’t back off on an opponent when you had them down - but instead they dumped her in the trunk of a car in the middle of nowhere. Why? Were they coming back later to riddle the trunk full of bullet holes?

No. She was a gift - a gift to Six. He wanted to kill her himself. Wow, how busy did a guy have to be to wait to kill someone he’d wanted dead for years? Was she no longer his number one priority? She was heartbroken.

She was sitting on the edge of the back seat, half out the door, trying to saw through the ties on her wrist (boy, this was awkward; it was her own fault though, as she was out of practice), when she heard the crunch of tires on gravel coming her way. She quickly got out of the car, kicked the door shut, and crouched down behind the far side of the car. She had to know how many people were here before deciding on a method of attack.

But she saw, as soon as it entered the clearing, that it was an old olive drab Jeep with a slight rattle in the engine, which was very familiar. A quick but thorough scan revealed that it was indeed Shan by himself. As soon as he looked around, she stood up and waved the knife at him. He turned off the Jeep, which ticked for a minute like a dying clock, and as soon as he opened the door, he said, “Do you know I’ve been all over this fucking forest? That guy couldn’t give directions to his own house. And aren’t you supposed to be locked in the trunk anyways?”

“Think a trunk can hold me?”

He thought about that a moment. “Guess not. You are the Terminator.”

No, Shan wasn’t legally able to drive due to his seizures, but he used the Jeep only for short jaunts, and only during the day, when there was lesser light contrast. He hadn’t been caught yet, hadn’t been in an accident, and she wasn’t about to rat him out.

Shan came over, and she gave him the knife to finish cutting the plastic ties off her wrists. He did it quickly, but then again, he was stronger than your average bear. She noticed little dark flecks on the bottom of his ash gray sweatshirt, splatters that she recognized as blood. “How’d it go?”

“You were right, they sent over the amateur cleaning squad for me, and I played placid and dumb until I wasn’t anymore. Either I am remarkably good, or they were really shitty at this sort of thing.”

“How much did you hurt ‘em?”

“It ranges from mildly to extremely. But I kinda doubt they’re gonna file charges against me.”

“Yeah. You’d be surprised at how guys wanted by Interpol rarely go to the cops.”

She gave him the knife, and he pulled up his sweatshirt, revealing an enviable six pack of abs and two gun butts. “I have a couple more in the car if you’d rather have one of those.”

“You really shouldn’t stick guns in the front of your pants. That’s how guys shoot their nuts off.” She took both of the guns, as she knew he had no intention of keeping either. One was a Glock, the other was an HK, both nine millimeters. She preferred something with a bit more stopping power, but if you were a good aim, these would do the trick. She had very good aim.

“But it looks so cool on TV.” As she checked the rounds in the guns and tucked them into the waistband of her jeans (not in the front, although she had no nuts to shoot off), he peered at her closely and reached for her forehead. “That looks painful.”

She stepped back, and he stopped. “It’s just a bruise. I’ve had worse.”

“Maybe I oughta test you for a concussion. Is your vision blurry? Do you have a headache? Feel sick?”

“No, yes, no. I’m fine, Shan. You have to have brains to rattle ‘em.”

“No you don’t. I’m living proof of that.”

She gave him a light back hand slap on the arm. “Can it, you. We have to get ready; I don’t know when they’re coming back.”

“What are we getting’ ready for? Please tell me we’re not going all Wild Bunch.”

“No, but we are gonna watch and wait. Six is comin’ back, and I wanna turn the tables on him.”

Shan sighed heavily, rolling his eyes and slumping his shoulders. “You know that’s where shit inevitably goes wrong in movies, right?”

“Hey, if this were a movie, I’d have bigger tits.”

He glanced down at her t-shirt and shrugged. “Yeah, guess so. So what do I do?”

Sometimes it was nice to have irrefutable logic on your side.

One Week Earlier

This time, the meeting was in a movie theater. It was early on a Tuesday afternoon on a sunny but cool day, and this picture was apparently a flop, which would explain why there was only Sir Randolph Frost sitting in the center of the second topmost row of the otherwise empty theater. Z hadn’t really been expecting to find him eating Junior Mints, but he was. This proved he was an old spymaster: always keep them guessing.

She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. She just sat down beside him and put her feet on the seat back in front of her as a loud promo for some network series or another unspooled on the big screen. Never mind that there were only two people in the entire theater, they were going to play this grim entertainment death march out.

Frost leaned over and shook the box of candy. “Want one? The chocolate’s plastic, but I can’t stop eating them.” His hair gleamed liquid silver in the dark, his accent still unbearably Cambridge upper class. In spite of that, he was still the most decent man she’d ever encountered in the spy game.

“No thanks. I prefer unbuttered popcorn.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

“I prefer salt over grease. I thought last time was the last time we were going to meet.”

He popped a shiny black button of candy in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, looking up at the flashing images on the screen and yet ignoring them. “There’s been a change of plans, I’m afraid.”

“That’s never good.”

“No, it’s not. Six leaked word to the Home Office that you were still alive.”

(more…)

1 - Thugs

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before. -Steven Wright

Nothing suggested you’d made horrible choices in your life like waking up in the trunk of the car.

(more…)

“I don’t suppose it was suicide?” Roan asked, collapsing on his sofa.

“It’s a little strange to shoot yourself in the back of the head, so I’m gonna say no,” Murphy said.

Roan made a noise of strangled disappointment, pressing his hand hard into his forehead. It didn’t change a thing. “Fuck.”

“If it makes you feel better, we have a suspect.”

“Who?”

“A minor player of a thug named Marco Lewis. He’s a small time drug dealer, but it seems Mr. Faraday owed him money. And Mrs. Faraday’s murder has some of the hallmarks of a robbery gone bad, so what we think happened here was genius - a/k/a Marco - tried to extort money the hubby owed him from the missus, and something went wrong. Mr. Faraday was probably then killed, for more than one reason.”

“So she was right to be concerned about his debts, she just wasn’t concerned enough in time.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Shit,” he sighed wearily. He felt terrible for Holly. If he’d been faster, better, would she still alive? No, he couldn’t think about that, mainly because it wouldn’t change anything. His client was dead, and while if he’d gotten the case a few days earlier he might have been able to do something to prevent it, it was all a moot point now.

Murphy promised to call him as soon as she heard anything about the Chesney house, and he went upstairs and took a quick shower that failed to make him feel any better. After getting dressed, he got together some books for Dylan as well as his MP3 player and went back to the hospital to drop them off. There he encountered Dylan’s sister Sheba and her husband.

That was always awkward. Roan got the feeling that Sheba was humoring him most of the time, and was not so secretly freaked out by his infected status (although he couldn’t blame her there - she was probably afraid he might accidentally infect her brother), and it didn’t help that her well meaning husband usually gave off that odd straight guy vibe that said, ‘I want to be cool around gay guys, but damn, they creep me out‘. Everything was civil and fine, but Roan still got the impression that Sheba would have been happier if he had absolutely nothing more to do with her brother.

Dylan was happy to see him, though, and gave him a kiss even before he gave him the books and his MP3 player. He was as bored as hell and wanted to go, but he’d just gotten some “damn scan or something” and they weren’t letting him go just yet. Only later did Roan find out that Dylan had gotten a head CT, and figured Dylan dismissed it so he didn’t freak out about it. Dee would later tell him that it was fine, they were just checking something. What he didn’t say.

Dylan scooted over and patted the mattress beside him, so Roan ended up sitting on his bed with him as they talked, Dylan leaning his head against his shoulder as Roan idly caressed his thigh, and they talked about very mundane things. But it was strangely nice; Roan felt oddly settled and didn’t notice his drug cravings in this moment of chaste intimacy. Dylan just had a calming influence on him; he made him feel Human, although not in a bad way. He enjoyed his warmth and his comforting scent, although it was diluted with the awful medical scent of the hospital.

He admitted that he hadn’t taken a pill all day, and save for tiredness and minor cravings, he really didn’t miss them. What he didn’t tell him was he feared he had acquired his own internal numbness, which was better than any narcotic. And he was going to have to learn to use it, because if he didn’t get his lion episodes under control, he was going to be in real trouble.

A nurse came in and chased him off, which seemed par for the course, but she gave him and Dylan specially dirty looks and even though they were just sitting talking, she warned them stridently that there wasn’t “any of that kind of thing” allowed in the hospital. That kind of thing? What? Buttfucking? Did she think they were on the verge of having wild and perverted gay sex before she heroically burst through the door? He and Dylan exchanged a look - they seemed to be thinking the same thing - and before he left they shared a long, overly passionate kiss that they played up a bit, just to disgust and annoy her. Which it did. But she deserved it - they weren’t shy, acquiescent gays, and if she was going to indulge in jackassery, so were they. Although, to be totally honest, that was one hot kiss. Goddamn, they needed to kiss like that more often.

Just before he left Dylan’s floor he remembered Ponyboy, and went up a couple of floors. He hadn’t checked in on the kid forever, and no, he didn’t know him, but it was a decent thing just to check up on him. When he stepped out of the elevator, he saw Holden slumped in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that lined segments of the hallway, his tall frame almost folded in half. The posture looked more sad than painful. “Holden, everything okay?” he asked, belatedly realizing that he forgot to call him Fox. Oh well, hopefully no one noticed, and those that did didn’t care.

He sat back and looked up at him, a strange blankness in his eyes. “You here to see Ponyboy? You’re too late.”

“Oh shit.” He sat on the chair beside him. “What happened?”

“They think it was blood clot in his brain.” Holden shrugged and looked away, tears making his eyes look glassy. “Christ, what am I supposed to do now? Track down the parents he ran away from in the first place and say, ‘Hey, your little faggot is dead. Do you want his body or should I just throw him in the trash like you did?’ “ He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Fuck.”

“I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“I’m a detective; I’ll track the parents down. And when I was a cop, I used to hafta do the dead calls, contact relatives and next of kin to come down and identify a body.” He sighed at the memory. “People’s responses always surprised you. You expected the ones that reacted in horror or burst into sobs, but the ones who had no reaction, or the ones who said “I don’t care” or had some profane or pedestrian response to it were always the most startling. There were people who said they were watching something and they’d be over as soon as it was done; others who said simply, “Let ‘em rot” and hung up. You don’t know how people really feel about you until you die … and then you’re dead, so why would you give a fuck?”

Holden looked at him askance. “That was a philosophical abortion.”

“Hey, at least I tried.”

They just sat in silence for a moment, staring at the white wall before them, the noises of the hospital floor sounding like the background of a television show, minus the ubiquitous syrupy power ballad. “I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Holden finally admitted. “I didn’t know him at all. He was just a friend of a friend.”

“He was a kid, whose crime was essentially being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been any of us.”

He nodded and sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Well, it couldn’t have been you. You’d have ripped them to pieces and beaten them to death with their own limbs.”

Roan opened his mouth to object to that classification, but of course Holden had just been kind to him. He had seen him in a more transformed state than anyone had since Paris; he could have said “eaten them” and left it at that. It would be true. So he decided to simply say, “I think you’d have fucked them up pretty well too.”

Holden scoffed. “They wouldn’t have fucked with me either. I may sound like a twink, but I’m built like a jock. Those fucking scumbags only pick on easy targets.”

“True.” They sat together for a moment, staring at the wall. Sometimes there was just nothing that could be said or done. Sometimes all you could do was sit in the silence, and wait to see if the world ever noticed. Even though Roan knew from experience that it never did.

Poor Ponyboy. He wondered if his parents would care, and then feared the answer.

****

By the time Roan got home, there was a message waiting for him on his answering machine, one he had both longed for and feared. A body had been unearthed at the Chesney place. As had a piece of another one.

The next couple of days, it would be splattered all over the local news. In total, three bodies were found, all women, only one identified (by dental records - a woman named Jamie Lynn Anderton, Chesney’s youngest victim at age nineteen), although a concerted effort was under way to identify the other two. The disappointing thing was clearly none of these victims were Keith Turner, but it did prove that Roland Chesney was a more disturbed and violent man than many had believed. Murphy told him it sounded like the DA was going to try and cut a deal with him, get him to confess to other victims and point out other dumping places in exchange for slightly lesser charges. (A joke, as he was going to be in jail for the rest of his life no matter how this played out.) He must have known that, because Chesney was denying that he murdered the women. Although the dry desert conditions had basically jerked the bodies, some evidence was found that proved Chesney was lying his ass off. He’d probably have no choice but to deal.

Roan had Chris Spencer meet him at his office before the full week was up, and admitted to him that Chesney had been his best lead, and while Keith’s body hadn’t turned up, it was his opinion that Chesney was most likely to have grabbed Keith from the park that day. If it wasn’t Chesney, he honestly didn’t know who could have done the crime. It was a pathetic answer, one hardly worth voicing, but Chris cried a bit, both in relief and disappointment, and thanked him. He accepted that as all the answers he was probably going to get about Keith, and thanked him for it, even though Roan felt that Chris should probably be cursing him out. He found the killer of others, not necessarily his son, although Roan understood that even a pathetic scrap of a potential answer probably looked good to someone who had gone without even a hint all these many years. He just wished he could have given him a more concrete and satisfying answer.

Dylan was still bruised up by the time his gallery show came around, although Roan managed to convince him it looked butch and dangerous. Since Dylan was hoping to “integrate” more into his life, Holden and Fiona were invited to the show and came together, as Fiona wasn’t dating anyone, and Holden - as far as Roan could tell - never dated anyone who didn’t pay for his time. They seemed to like pretending they were a couple, as Fiona liked having “arm candy”, and Holden loved role playing. Holden turned on the charm and schmoozed everyone, including the art snobs whom Roan heard talking to Dylan and referring to him as his “blue collar boyfriend” (what?) which was supposedly “very trendy”. Roan felt the urge to go and punch them, but Dylan told him they were assholes and he should ignore them, while Holden went over and got them caught up in his charm, identifying himself as an “entertainment facilitator”, so they could all have a quiet laugh over these people in their Prada and Versace fawning over and kissing up to a gay prostitute. But Holden was far more honest than they were: he was a whore and gladly admitted it. These people were whores too, but pretended they weren’t. So Holden won that contest.

Dylan was pretty surprised to see his lion painting on the wall. Some people did a double take upon seeing Roan, and when they recognized him they moved away quickly. He considered growling just to see if he could make them piss themselves, but decided that was taking things a step too far.

Ultimately, the show was a good thing. Dylan sold a couple of paintings, and some of the art snobs seemed impressed with him. It got his name out there, and positive exposure was always a good thing.

Roan was doing okay without the pills for the most part, but he knew he had to work on his temper to keep the lion from coming out. How he was going to do that he had no idea, although he was considering a variety of methods. And while the Church of the Divine Transformation was quiet, before he and Dylan left on vacation, he found an anonymous note in his mailbox that said, “We haven’t forgotten”. He knew it was from them, but since it didn’t constitute harassment, he didn’t report it. But he hadn’t forgotten either.

They were away on a brief weekend vacation in Vancouver (which had started to feel like home away from home) when Roan had another dream about Paris.

He figured it was because he was in Canada, which he always associated with Paris. He and Paris were on a pier in the Bay, looking out at water as blue and still as glass. It was dusk, so the sky was very nearly the same color, leaving lights on the water and in the city skyline to define the horizon, where the water began and where the city ended. Roan was laying on the dock, his back on the sun warmed boards, his head on Paris’s thigh. Paris was sitting on the edge, legs dangling over the side of the pier, stroking his hair as he looked out on a Vancouver Island ferry in the distance. Roan was pretty sure this was only a slightly dream altered memory. “How am I doing?” he asked.

Paris looked down at him, playing with his bangs as he smirked. “That’s a question for you, not me.”

God, he was too handsome. It still hurt his heart to look at him. “Do you think I can hold it together?”

Paris clicked his tongue and shook his head. “ What is that? Do you think so little of yourself? Everyone’s a little crazy. You’re not so bad. I’ve met guys who argued with their shoes. And I’m talking knock down drag outs, back and forth cussing. Well, forth. The shoes never did talk on their own.”

Roan reached up and tweaked his chin, making Paris look down at him and smile. “Will you be serious? I’d like you to tell me something. And don’t say “something”, got it?”

He sighed. “Fine. On a scale of one ten, you’re fourteen.”

Roan pondered that. “Wait - is that a sanity scale in ascending order or descending order?”

“Yes.”

It was Roan’s turn to roll his eyes and look off towards the peaceful bay. “How can you be a smart ass in my own head?”

“Hey, you’re the person having a conversation with a dead man. Judge your sanity accordingly.”

But that was why he asked him, because he didn’t want to think about it too much. How was he going to deal with the lion in him when he knew very well that he was basically an angry type of guy? Could he even get mad without the lion coming out? And did he just assume that Dylan knew he was still in love with Paris and would always have to split his affections with him?

His sleeping brain had brought him here for a reason, and Roan suspected he knew what it was. He stopped worrying about it and just relaxed, letting the wind and Paris’s ghostly fingers stroke his hair as the sky slowly darkened, and night fell softly enough to be comforting.

He refused to worry about the real world until he was back in it again.

____________

The End (For now)