6 – Hell’s Bank Notes

Roan knew that the cops would do this differently for murdered cats than murdered people, he knew it.

But he had really underestimated both the bullshit and the contempt.

It started with sniggering references to a cat house, and how many ways you can skin a dead cat, and while Seb didn’t take part and tried to shut everyone up, most ignored him. Roan knew it was macho cop shit as well as graveyard humor, the kind that eased the horror of ugly situations, but it was just too gleeful. He snapped when one obnoxious little rookie shit made a comment about what cat tasted like, and maybe the Greek restaurant down the street was responsible. People had said worse things, but he had had enough.

He grabbed the rookie by the throat and slammed him up against the nearest wall. He held him with one hand, felt his pulse beating in his neck, and knew with a single squeeze he could crush every single fine bone in his neck to powder. It wouldn’t even take much, just a millimeter more pressure; his arm was actually shaking from the restraint that he was using to hold back all the strength that wanted to pour into his hand. “These are people,” Roan growled. And it was a growl; there were actual words in there, but they surfaced and sank like a drowning person. “You fucking sadistic moron, these are Humans beings. Are you that much of a cannibal? You Hannibal Lecter’s boy, huh?”

Seb was right there, and looked like he was about to touch him, maybe grab his arm, but instantly thought better of it. Instead, he said, firmly but not angrily, “Roan, let him go. He’s mine to deal with.”

The rookie had almost reflexively put an arm on Roan’s shoulder, as if to push him away, but just as his confusion turned to rage, his hand slipped away as his rage turned to fear. Roan had no idea what the brush cut little boy saw in his face, but it scared the shit out of him. Almost literally. The growling probably wasn’t helping. While the fear was intoxicating, he knew it was time to step back.

With almost painful reluctance, he let go of the rookie, who sank down to the floor. Only then did he realize he had lifted him up off the floor. Once again, he was surprised at his own strength, and remembered Rosenberg told him that maybe it wasn’t his fault. He certainly hoped it wasn’t.

“Let’s take a walk,” Seb said. It wasn’t a suggestion and they both knew it.

As they both left the noisome hallway of the tenement, he noticed the cops were now shooting him looks of wariness, or looks that could have qualified as first degree felonies. But at least they’d all shut their ugly fucking mouths.

They had to make their way carefully down the broken staircase, but didn’t talk until they were outside. Seb turned on him, and exclaimed, “What the hell, dude? I know they were being assholes, but that doesn’t give you the right to Hulk out.”

“If I Hulked out, they’d be dead,” he snapped. “And they weren’t being assholes; they were a hell of a lot worse than that. Those were bodies in there, and they were making fun of the whole situation, like this was a fucking disturbance at a strip joint.”

Seb gave him his firm but otherwise emotion free Spock look. “Could you please stop growling? It’s distracting.”

He hadn’t realized he was growling – yes, again – and it was a true effort to stop. “They’re treating them like a joke, Seb, like they aren’t people at all.”

“I know, and I’m reporting each one who made a crack. This is not your fight, Roan.”

“Isn’t it? They’re my people.”

That made him raise an eyebrow at him. “You’ve adopted them all? I thought you weren’t -”

“This isn’t the place for semantics. You better go back inside and make sure those fuckholes aren’t wearing the victims as hats.” He then turned and stalked away, before he could take out his rage on Seb, who was possibly the only non-asshole at the scene.

At least the cougar was okay. He drugged her before forensics was able to pick its way up the staircase, and the cat squad took her away, complaining that they never saw any action anymore. Roan wished he could say the same thing.

Once he was back in his car, he felt like punching something, but the last time he did he almost broke his steering wheel, and he couldn’t imagine how much that would cost to replace.

The cops weren’t going to treat this like a murder case, he knew it. It was legal to kill loose cats, wasn’t it? They weren’t going to try very hard to find the killer, or even find out who the victims were. Yes, Seb was a good guy, and Chief Matthews seemed to want his services as the resident cat expert, but he was losing what little faith he had left in humanity.

That actually gave him an idea. He needed the help of another person who had zero faith in humanity.

Holden answered on the second ring. “Well, aren’t I mister popularity today? And what can I do for you, Roan?”

Did he even want to know what that popularity crack meant? “You home? I need to talk to you.”

“Great, yeah, come over, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Was that sarcasm? Somehow he didn’t think so. “Make me a sandwich?”

“You just changed, didn’t you?”

He wasn’t still growling, was he? If he wasn’t, he could neither hear it or feel it. “How do you know?”

“Your voice. Sounds like you’ve been scraping your throat with a metal rasp.”

“That’s a very specific descriptive.”

“I know. I save this shit for you. I know you’re the only one who’d appreciate it. Chicken or tuna?”

He checked over his shoulder to see if he could tell where the conversational shift went. “Huh?”

“Your sandwich. Which would you prefer?”

“You’re serious about that?” Truth be told, he was hungry, but he usually was after a shift. “Tuna, I guess.”

“Good choice. The chicken’s kinda iffy. And don’t hit the pills, I got something for that too. See you in a few.” With that, Holden hung up.

Roan looked at the cell for a moment, his anger draining away to simple confusion. What the hell was all that about? Then again, it was Holden – he would never understand the man, nor was he going to waste his time trying. He just lived to confound, vex, and thwart, all words he probably would have liked. And that was precisely the reason he called him.

His head started throbbing on the drive over, a seeming after-effect of the sharp pains pulsing in his jaw, bad enough that he wanted to reach up and rip off his lower jaw. (Could he? He had a feeling he could if he really wanted to, so he wasn’t going to push it.) The sun coming out didn’t help, as the light stabbed into his eyes like glass shards. Was he getting a migraine? His reaction to light seemed to indicate that.

By the time he reached Holden’s apartment, he ignored what he’d told him on the phone and went ahead and gulped a Percocet before getting out of the car. He was going to need it.

He was about to knock when the door opened, and Holden said, “Wow, you look like shit. Maybe you should take some pills.”

“Say it louder, I’m pretty sure your upstairs neighbor didn’t hear you,” he replied sourly.

Once they were inside, and Holden had shut the door behind them, he said, “Please, he’s a drug dealer. All he’ll wanna do is sell you some E.” Holden was shirtless, wearing nothing but sweatpants and the dog tags he got from that soldier client, now long dead. His apartment smelled like popcorn and tuna, and the scent of food made his stomach roil. It must have showed on his face, because Holden looked alarmed. “Fuck, you gonna hurl?”

He wasn’t sure, and he took a moment to just stand still and concentrate on swallowing down his gorge. “I dunno. I think I’m having a migraine attack.”

“Fuck. Okay, c’mon, let’s get you settled, I have an ice pack.” Holden helped him needlessly to the sofa, and then picked up a saucer and put it on Roan’s leg. “Have that, it should make you feel better in a few minutes.”

It was a brown lump, which would have been really unappealing, except it smelled like chocolate. A brownie chunk, only … there was something else there too, too strong to ignore. “Are you seriously feeding me a pot brownie?”

“These are better than your average po-bo,” he claimed, retrieving an ice pack from his fridge. “I know Mavis, this charming British lady who works for the Angel Project, you know, that charity that delivers food to seriously ill people? Real sweetie; wish she was my grandmother. Anyways, she makes these special painkiller brownies for some of her people, and by making a generous donation I got some. I keep it on hand for really bad days.”

“Pot brownies are horrible.” He’d had a bite of one once, and almost immediately spit it out. It was dry, with an almost straw like texture, and tasted like chocolate laced shit. He had no idea how anyone ever ate them.

“These are different. Mavis has a way with Hershey’s syrup. Try it, you’ll see.”

He sniffed it warily. “You turnin’ into a pothead on me?”

This made Holden snort derisively. “I oughta. I just have painkillers around in case I ever need ‘em. A lingering remnant of my street corner days, I suppose. You always had to be ready for somebody to try and beat the shit out of you. And trust me, those brownies are a great pain killer.”

Well, he was feeling like shit, so he went ahead and took a nibble. He was right – it really wasn’t bad. It tasted like an actual brownie, just with a thicker texture and a slight aftertaste. It didn’t make him feel like vomiting, which was a minor triumph. “Hmm.”

“See, what did I tell you?” He came back from the kitchen, with a plate containing a sandwich, a blue ice pack, and a bottle of peppermint honey green tea clamped firmly under his arm. As Roan continued to eat the brownie, Holden put the plate, tea, and ice bag on the coffee table in front of him. “Mint’s good for your stomach, so drink up.”

He eyed him warily. “You have mother hen aspects about you, you know.”

“Father hen,” he corrected, flinging himself down on the other end of the couch, and picking up his half empty bag of microwave popcorn. His television was on, the sound down to levels that Roan could hear, but he was pretty sure Holden couldn’t. “It’s a hard habit to break.”

That was what Holden meant when he referred to “his boys” – when he was just your average street whore, he still looked after a bunch of younger, smaller, or greener street kids (they weren’t all hookers, but most). Street kids often glommed together simply due to safety in numbers, but there was always a leader, someone who looked after the others, be they tougher, smarter, or more experienced than the rest. Holden fit all aspects of the bill, and seemed to have taken his job quite seriously. Even now, he was trying to protect kids he didn’t even know.

“You watch The Soup?”

Holden glanced at the set, as if double checking, as he grabbed his remote and hit the pause button. The fucker had a DVR. “Yep. It’s funny, and allows me to keep vaguely up to date on reality shows that some of my clients seem to love, don’t ask me why. But I must admit some do have a horrific train wreck quality about them.”

“I don’t know about other people, but I have enough horrific train wrecks in my life.” He popped the rest of the brownie segment in his mouth before reaching for the ice pack and holding it to his head.

“Oh hon, I know. I’m a spectator. Which leads me to think we have another train wreck to discuss.”

He couldn’t deny that. He explained what he’d discovered in Jefferson Heights, and how he was afraid the cops wouldn’t treat it as much of anything. “Do you have any contacts in that part of the city?”

Holden considered that with the barest hint of a smile on his face. “I have friends all over, especially in low places. What do you want?”

“I want to know who might be bragging about cat killing. He was using an abandoned building as a tannery, which tells me he can’t do it where he lives for some reason.”

“Or he knows better than to shit where he eats.”

“Yeah, could be. But I find it hard to believe a man who appeared to be making them into skins would keep quiet about his hobby.”

“Isn’t that rule number one for a serial killer?”

“Typically. But since he’s not, in his mind or the mind of the legal system, killing people, he may not think of himself in that way. Hell, he may think he’s doing the community a service.”

“Well, according to Pat Robertson, infecteds are destroying America.” He paused briefly. “Or was it gays? Foreigners? Women? Hell if I can remember. What month is it?”

“Let’s just say all of the above and move on. Do you think you can help me?”

He nodded, now all business. “No problem. I’ll get the word out I’m looking for a cat killer, someone good at his job. I assume you want him alive?”

He wasn’t kidding. That was one of the most disturbing things about Holden. No, he didn’t judge, and that was refreshing, but he didn’t judge, and that could also at times be very unsettling. Not that he didn’t have a code, but it was a very limited one: no kids, no innocents, no one who wasn‘t there by choice. Everyone else was fair game. Although, to be honest, that was a pretty good code, especially if you believed in karma. “Yes.” He wanted to make sure they had the right guy, and Roan knew he would know the man if he met him. He would smell him, smell the trace of a scent he left at the murder scene, smell a scent of death on him that no amount of soap or time could wash away. Predators knew other predators.

Holden simply nodded again, looking in his microwave popcorn bag, probably for some remaining popped kernels. “You know, I took today off as a mental health day. I figured I’d just watch TV all day and maybe sleep for twelve hours. Best laid plans, huh?”

“I thought I’d be trolling Capitol Hill, looking for a missing man.” His stomach had settled, the pain in his head fading to a dull roar, so he reached for the sandwich.

“Oh, a case? Can I help?”

“Only if you want to pass a photo around, ask if anyone’s seen him.”

“Goddamn, I hardly have to get off my ass for that. Can do.”

Roan took a bite of the sandwich, and marveled. He was expecting a simple tuna on wheat, even though his nose told him to expect a sharp tang of vinegar, but what Holden had made him was a tuna sandwich with fresh vinaigrette, pickles, lettuce, and pepperoncinis for crunch and zest. “Holy shit,” he said impolitely, through a mouthful of food. “This is the best tuna sandwich I’ve ever had.”

“I don’t do normal,” Holden said, reaching for his can of Coke Zero. “Either I’m spectacular or I’m horrendous, but I never settle for the middle. Anyone can be average.” He said it with a little irony, but very little. And having seen him in action, it was easy to believe.

Since Roan was busy eating, Holden turned The Soup back on, and they both ended up watching it as Roan realized how surreal things had become, and the pot was kicking in, big time.

The funny thing about massive pain was the sudden absence of pain was almost orgasmic. Both the Perocets and the pot finally got together for a conference, and decided to make the hurt go away. Relief prickled along his scalp, giving him goosebumps as the ice pack made him shiver, and he still felt a calming warmth in his arms, hands, and legs. Suddenly Holden’s couch seemed like the most comfortable thing in the world.

Holden caught the shiver, and asked, “You okay?”

“I’m fucking brilliant. How strong was that pot?”

“Mavis only uses the best ingredients. She says that’s the key to a great dish; great ingredients trumps a sloppy execution.” He balled up the empty popcorn bag and tossed it towards his kitchenette. It bounced off the countertop and hit the floor. He shrugged at his failure, although it wasn’t clear where he was aiming.

“You know, I never ask how you are,” Roan said. It finally occurred to him, possibly because a secession of pain always made him chatty. He wasn’t sure why, but he was pretty sure this was how Dylan knew when he’d been hitting the pills.

He looked at him with genuine surprise. It was so rare to see a genuine emotion on Holden’s face he hardly knew how to react to it. “Why would you? If it was worth mentioning, I’d say something.”

“Would you?”

“If it was important.”

He frowned at him. “You’re lying. You don’t give any of yourself away.”

Holden looked at him with what may have been a genuine small smile. “There’s nothing to give away. I get so exhausted being what people want me to be that when I’m on my own, I enjoy being nothing to no one. You have no idea how tiring it is always being someone else.”

“I think I might,” he said. He was thinking mainly of how hard it was to walk the line sometimes, between being a Human and being the expression of a virus that ruled his life. The cop and the lawbreaker, the Human and the animal, the outsider and the … pariah. Okay, no, that last one didn’t work. At least he knew what he meant.

“Yeah, maybe,” he reached over and grabbed the ice pack, leaning in enough that Roan thought he might try and kiss him. But he behaved himself, and didn’t. “You went ahead and took some pills, didn’t you?”

“My skull felt like it was going to split open from the pressure.”

He grimaced as he stood, returning to the kitchen with the ice pack. “Go ahead and stretch out, sleep it off, I’ll call Dylan and let him know you’re here.”

Roan laughed. “Like hell. I feel great now.”

“You’re way too fucked up to drive.”

“No I’m not.”

“This isn’t an argument,” Holden said, and held up some keys. It took him a moment to realize they were his keys.

Roan instantly reached into his coat pockets, only to find that yes, his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him – his keys were gone. And he never felt them being lifted. Hell, when did Holden even have the chance to do that? “Motherfucker! How’d you get my keys?”

“Oh please, hon, I’m a professional hooker. I could take your wallet, fill it full of junk mail, and replace it without you being any wiser.” He palmed the keys and dropped them in the pocket of his sweatpants. “You sleep this off. I don’t know if it was the crime scene or what, but you look like motherfucking hell. Take five before you drop.”

It was the drugs, they made him feel good, and it seemed to switch off his internal filter, because he blurted, “I might have a brain tumor.” He didn’t mean to say it, it just came out.

Holden had been coming back into the living room, but he froze where he was, and the look on his face was once again genuine, one of naked surprise that made him look oddly Human. Not that he wasn’t or never did, but Holden had such a slick awareness that he always seemed better than Human. Now he was just a man, and a startled one at that. Maybe if he wasn’t so wasted, he could appreciate that he was getting a rare glimpse of the real Holden, a person almost no one ever saw. “Are you serious?”

“I hafta tell Dylan, but I don’t know how. All I do is disappoint or scare him, and here I am, doing it again. Why doesn’t he leave me? I’m only gonna kill him, one way or another, and I don’t want to hurt him anymore.”

Holden looked genuinely stunned, and Roan suddenly wished he had a camera. Holden then dry washed his face, giving himself a moment to process what was said and get over his shock, and came at it again. “Okay, first of all, he loves you, and I suspect he’s kind of a low level masochist, ‘cause he hasn’t walked away from your drama. Second, hurt him? Who has the fucking brain tumor? It ain’t him. So stop being a macho asshole and just tell him.”

“Like it’s that easy.”

“Fine. Get wasted and tell him. Everything’s easier when your wasted.”

“Apparently.”

After another moment, where Holden briefly paced in a circle, he said, “Try Valium. I’ve noticed Valium has a tendency to make people say things they normally wouldn’t say.”

Roan was going to ask him how he knew this, but decided not to. Also, was Holden genuinely rattled? He seemed to be, kind of, as much as Holden could get rattled. Had he upset him? Why was he upset? Well, maybe it was kind of a big deal, announcing you might have a brain tumor. To him, it was just one more damned thing in a life full of damned things. “I might not have one,” he offered, aware that seemed like too little too late now.

He gave him a hollow eyed look, like he was staring at Roan from the bottom of a well. Or maybe that was just the drugs kicking in big time. “Maybe, but you know it would explain a lot.”

Roan shrugged, as he could only shrug for the moment. He was so tired. Oh, he felt better than he had in ages, but he was still ludicrously weary, and his arms and legs felt like they’d been replaced with lead replicas. Maybe Holden was right about him needing to sleep this off.

Maybe he could sleep it all off, the day, the week, the year. Rip Van Winkle probably had the right idea.

5 – Long And Lonely Step

Considering the time of day, Roan wasn’t surprised to find that The Eagle wasn’t very crowded, with only a few men who’d come in on their lunch break and lingered still hanging around. The bartender was a reasonably good looking bear in a maroon t-shirt, with a tattoo of barbed wire encircling his left wrist. He showed him the picture of the supposed Adam Jephson, and fed him the story about him coming into an inheritance despite having been estranged from his family. (Because it was a gay bar, and Adam was trusted to be gay, the bartender just assumed he was estranged from the family due to his gayness. Roan didn’t discourage this belief.)

The bartender, whose name was Tanner, admitted that he wasn’t sure if he’d seen him or not; the picture was a profile, and after all, he kind of looked like a lot of people. (He couldn’t argue with any of this.) Tanner also flirted with him a little, offered him a drink on the house, and Roan found his kindness so alluring he agreed, but only to a virgin margarita (well, it was the afternoon, and he was on several Percocets). After he made him his drink, he admitted he recognized him as “that cat guy” (oy vey), but added he thought he was pretty cool. He also told him not to worry, that he knew he was “Toby’s guy” (Dylan’s old bar nickname), and he wasn’t seriously flirting with him, although the margarita was on the house. Roan suspected a bit of duplicity here, either that or he was hoping they were an open couple looking for a third. But after a little bit more conversation, he realized Tanner was honestly interested in Dylan, not him, he was simply flirting with him because he was here. Which was fair enough, because Dylan was one hot dude, a lot hotter than him. If guys liked him, Roan chalked it up to his out of control pheromones, one of his dubious viral “gifts”.

Tanner agreed to keep an eye out and spread the word, see if anyone knew of the guy, and Roan thanked him before leaving the bar and cutting his way towards the back bathrooms, which were coincidentally far too cramped and uncomfortable to ever have sex in. (Coincidence? Doubtful.) It was in the claustrophobic corridor, paneled in dark wood and safe sex posters featuring attractive naked men from the neck down, that a sudden cramp of cold seemed to seize his guts, making him stop in his tracks as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he had an almost undeniable urge to run, to leave the place through the walls if need be, just get the fuck out of there now.

It took him a moment to pinpoint the problem: the music. The bar’s sound system was playing M83, a song from the CD “Before The Dawn Heals Us” – the CD Paris was playing when he killed himself. It was … logically, it was stupid and pointless, but he ran out of the bar like it was on fire.

He stopped and leaned against the brick wall outside the tapas restaurant, doubled over in pain and trying to catch his breath. The pain had made his solar plexus a fist, it was radiating pain outward into his torso and away, like he was a vessel that existed simply for this agony. There were tears in his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if they were from physical pain or some other kind of pain. So much for Percocets, huh? Couldn’t fight this.

The worst thing about grief was it laid little booby traps for you. Oh sure, you moved on with your life, you could fool yourself you were past it, and then the trap would spring and those metal teeth of sorrow would crush you, puncture your lungs and tear your heart and split your brain down the center like your skull was made of silk.

He was gulping air and trying to get a grip, trying to fight back pain, as he felt his jaw ache with the force with which he was clenching his teeth, and belatedly he realized he was growling, a sort of sad, muted sound born purely of pain.

He was shaking and trying to keep from whimpering when he realized not all the shaking was coming from his body – his phone was vibrating. He didn’t want to answer it, but fuck, he probably needed the distraction. He sank down to the cold asphalt as he answered, seeing Seb’s number on the display. “What?” he grumbled, hoping Seb couldn’t hear anything in his voice he shouldn’t.

“Woah, ain’t you in a bad mood?” he replied. “Well, it’s gonna get worse. You know Jefferson Heights?” Rather than talk, Roan simply grunted an affirmative as he wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “We got a cat loose, and it may have taken refuge in one of these squatter’s shacks. We’ve been ordered not to make a move, to leave it to the cat squad, but I figured you might wanna crack at it first.”

Jefferson Heights was actually an unofficial name, given to one of the poorer parts of the city. It was filled with slums always being condemned or burned down, and as a result, there might be twelve apartment buildings on one block and half would be officially empty (unofficially was a different story) at any one time. It was a minor maze, and most cops didn’t go in there without serious back up first, mainly because you never knew what you’d find. Crack den, shooting gallery, homeless encampment, Neo-Nazi squatters (this was true; he was on the force when that particular incident happened), dog fighting ring, maybe even, if you were lucky, an unlicensed take out joint. If you didn’t absolutely have to be there, most people avoided it.

And as coincidence would have it, it wasn’t far from where he was right now. Maybe eight miles, tops. He cleared his throat and finally said, “I’ll be right there.”

“Fine, Catmandu, but are you sure you’re all right? You sound weird.”

“Catmandu?”

“You’re a superhero, you need a superhero name.”

“Are you fucking serious? That’s horrible.”

“What? I know it’s cheesy, but most superhero names are kinda cheesy.”

“If you ever call me that again, I’ll break your fucking nose,” he snapped, and hung up the phone. “Catmandu. How fucking gay does he think I am?” Well, at least that distracted him from the pain.

In the car on the way to the Heights, he listened to Mr. Bungle on his iPod and shouted along with the lyrics he could make out or knew. It made him laugh and cry a bit at the same time. Mr. Bungle was the perfect soundtrack to a psychotic break, so much so that he felt that they were almost a community service. If you were crazy or going crazy, you could listen to them and not feel so alone. ‘Your lips say one thing but the drugs say another’ was perhaps the most insightful lyric about his life since ‘And if I bite my cheeks long enough I figure I could chew right through the skin’. Considering it, that was pretty fucking sad.

Before getting out of the car he checked in the rearview to make sure he wasn’t crying still. He looked a bit like he had been crying, but he tried to force a partial change, enough to flush his skin and just make him look fucked up, not like he had been crying. He could settle for that.

He didn’t feel terribly strong, pain echoed through him like ripples on the surface of a disturbed pond, but he knew enough not to show weakness. Cop cars stacked the sides of the street, making a half assed cordon, and the amount of blue on the street seemed excessive, several of them openly wearing bulletproof vests on the outside of their uniforms. They were more afraid of the Humans around here than the loose cat, a message they were sending loud and clear.

Obviously most of the guys recognized him, and more than a few sneered or turned their backs on him. Boy, he wasn’t going to win any popularity contests, was he? Someone at the head of the street whispered, “Fuckin’ kitty fag,” to his buddy, letting Roan know they forgot about his sense of hearing. Right now he didn’t care much, he was too weary to give a shit about their insults.

He cut through the cops easily, they parted like he was toxic, until he reached Seb, who regarded him with the same equanimity that he always did. “Wow, Roan, you look like shit.”

“Bad day. Any word on the cat squad?”

“ETA seven minutes out. Better get movin’.”

This was a bad area to have a superior sense of smell, but then again, most places were. Still, he crouched down, as being closer to the ground would help him filter out so many of the Human smells, the garbage smells. He smelled blood, tainted quite heavily with alcohol, and asked, “Who was hurt?”

“Transient. He was able to stop the attack by shoving a lighter in its face. He’ll probably survive. Said it was a cougar.”

“Amazing he had the presence of mind. He was super fucking drunk.”

Seb chuckled. “Yeah, noticed that. Guy smelled like a sour mash explosion.”

The lighter explained the noxious scent of burned hair, but there was something else, something … off. “Cat’s sick,” he said.

“Might explain the attack.”

“Probably.” Was he convinced? Oh, he didn’t know – it seemed to vary from one cat to another. But he didn’t like the smell.

He stood, took the drug gun and radio Seb offered him, and followed the trace scents, just barely there beneath the odious, garbagy Human scents. He followed it into the alley, which was strewn with even fresher garbage, enough to make him almost gag.

He pressed on, past old blood, gang graffiti, and a trash can overflowing with garbage so old it was sweet with rot. The buzz and click of insects was a constant background noise.

His phone went off, still on vibrate, but in this state it was as loud as a bang, so he reached in his pocket and shut it off without looking at it. When he concentrated, when he let the cat inch forward, his senses exploded, and he had almost a kind of synethesia. Sounds were almost feelings; smells were colors, layers in the air. The Human and trash smells made the air look polluted, a sort of murky, washed out brown, nearly the color of landfill mud, but the sick cat was a tiny red thread beneath it all he could follow, the world’s dimmest beacon.

He entered one of the empty buildings, whose door had been smashed in by police battering rams a long time ago and never replaced. The smell of Human shit and piss was overpowering, a noxious dirty yellow funk, that suggested that junkies and homeless people were using it as a toilet.

There was no light, the former windows (they hadn’t seen glass for decades) were boarded up, but he could see well enough to know he didn’t want to pull out his flashlight. There were gang tags, curses, and feces smeared on the wall, and a staircase that was definitely unsafe, with a missing chunk of railing and a broken step gaping like missing teeth in a crooked mouth. But the cat’s scent line went that way, so he had no choice.

Careful to avoid any particularly disgusting piles, he made his way to the steps and carefully went up them, avoiding empty spots and steps soft with rot and damage. The ceiling was hanging down in chunks on the second level, so he couldn’t imagine the upper floors were very stable if at all passable.

There were no rats, which told him the cat was here in case nothing else did. The rats around here had no fear of house cats or even Humans – why should they be afraid? They outnumbered them all – but a cougar was a different story. Rats were smart enough to know you don’t fuck with that shit.

So he wasn’t surprised to see the muddy hued cougar waiting for him in the middle of the corridor, growling low in its throat. It was small, female, and attempted to roar. Cougars, whether the born or infected variety, couldn’t actually roar; they could squawl, make an almost equivalent noise, but a roar it wasn’t. He reflexively showed it what a roar actually was, tearing up his throat and hurting his own ears in the process.

The cougar seemed to accept it well. Her ears went back, but she crouched slightly, not as if ready to pounce but in submission. She wasn’t going to fight him, she knew she would lose, and this again brought home his general, unspoken thought that the female cats were generally smarter than the male ones. Of course, to be fair, it varied from cat to cat – he’d met some remarkably dumb females, and some males who seemed to have some sense – but in general he liked facing females more than males. There was usually less bloodshed.

But the cougar did something odd. It turned and walked down the hall, not running, not trying to hide, and he followed in curiosity.

The stench hit him about three feet later.

Dark tendrils of the sickly sweet rot of death, the metallic meat smell of blood, and it was so overwhelming that he had to pause for a moment to regain his bearings. He’d have instantly blamed the cougar, but the smell of blood had the sort of rusty tang of old blood; it wasn’t fresh.

The cougar was at the fifth door on the left, scratching at a closed apartment door like a housecat who desperately wanted back inside. It was such odd behavior that he wondered for a moment if this was a prank being played on him by the cat squad. Except they couldn’t rig something like this, and they weren’t really bright enough to think of something this creative either.

The cougar was trying to tell him something, and he knew exactly what: the death, the blood, the meat smell was behind that door, and the cougar didn’t like it any more than he did.

As he approached, the cougar backed off and crouched down low, submitting to him. He let his Human side come forward more, as the cougar was no threat, at least not to him. He wondered if he had his gun with him, because honestly he’d forgotten. The threat was behind the door, and even the cougar was happy to leave it to him.

Fuck it, he wasn’t Human – no matter what the threat, he didn’t need a gun. Like Seb said, he was a superhero, right? He was the weapon. Guns were extraneous.

He kicked open the door, as surprise wasn’t much of an option with a cougar scratching to be let in. He didn’t think there was anything living on the other side, though, he smelled nothing alive amongst the dead.

Still, what he saw surprised him. It was a tiny apartment, more or less intact, and there were pelts hanging like the shadow of death from the low ceiling in just about every available area, the layers of newspaper on the floor stained brown with blood. Roan counted over a dozen cat skins, of all the species – lion, panther, cougar, leopard. (Okay, no tiger, but good fucking luck getting one of those.) They were almost all headless pelts, but otherwise full skins, cleaned and dressed like a professional tanner had been working on them.

On a rickety card table in the center of the room were a couple of severed paws, with what looked like metal fittings on the end. Was someone turning them into jewelry? Maybe some kind of trophy pendant. There was a single severed head on the table too, a panther, the top of the skull and brain removed – someone had been using it as an ashtray. Somehow he recognized Marlboro butts, a weird little detail that shouldn’t have stuck out but somehow did.

The cougar made a strange noise behind him, a sort of a combination growl and whimper, and Roan found himself echoing it before catching himself. The horror of the scene sank like a stone in his body, leaving him feeling cold. Then the rage came, a wave that warmed him as a growl boiled in his throat, and he had to swallow it all back before it overwhelmed his rational mind. Well, whatever he had left that passed for a rational mind.

He remembered his radio, and pulled it out from where he’d stashed it in his coat pocket. “I need a forensics team in here.”

“What’cha got?” Seb replied.

“A slaughter.”

“Cat under control?”

“The cat didn’t do it. A Human did this.”

“What?”

“It’s an abattoir in here, Seb. Some motherfucking bastard has killed a bunch of cats, skinned them alive.”

These weren’t just cat pelts, of course; these were Human skins. Someone had  killed infecteds in their cat form and peeled the fur from their bones, kept their transformed skin as a hunting trophy.

Not just a murderer. A sadist, a fiend, the sickest bastard to walk the city.

And he was loose. Where was the freak squad for him?

4 – Abracadabra

Rosenberg objected to the idea of an outpatient biopsy, although didn’t HMO’s do shit like that all the time? Besides, Roan being who he was, being opened up wouldn’t hurt him; he’d heal faster than a normal, get on with his life. But she still objected.

So they set aside the biopsy for another day. He did agree to get the brain scan though, if only to appease her, and he hoped she knew what a sacrifice that was.

There was something awful about being squashed in a narrow metal tube, which echoed with strange noises (clanks, hums, sinister science fiction type sounds), and made you feel like you had been shoved into a torpedo and were about to be fired at an enemy vessel. That wouldn’t have been a bad way to die, come to think of it – flung at the enemy like a biological weapon, which was in essence what he was. Rosenberg sometimes talked to him, and since he was a captive audience inside the big scanning machine, she told him about all the assholes out there (fellow virologists) who make various claims about the virus and infecteds, while she was sitting on him (in a figurative sense, of course), and could blow all those putzes away. Did she want him to give consent to release information on him? Too bad, she wasn’t going to get it.

He wondered if he was going stir crazy in the tube. He felt like he’d been in the scanner for most of the day, but it was about an hour. Even though he’d done nothing but remain motionless in the damn tube, he felt both jittery and exhausted. She wanted to talk some more, schedule him for a biopsy, but he was in no mood for a talk and told her he’d schedule them later on his way out the door. He believed she called him a very nasty name, but maybe she was talking to someone else.

He sat in the car, wondering what he was going to do. His head hurt from the noises and the lights in the scanner – was she trying to trigger a migraine? He could believe it – and struggled to open a bottle of Percocet. His hands were shaking, and he wasn’t sure why. There were so many reasons for him to fall to pieces right now. Not that he was planning to, but it was nice to know he had a pass if he couldn’t hold his shit together.

He swallowed a couple of pills with lukewarm bottled water that tasted more like plastic than anything else, and pondered his next move. He should tell Dylan; it was only fair that he knew his freak husband had a freak problem. He couldn’t show up at work and tell him, that was cruel, but right now he was doing his usual weekly work for the temple, and there was no way in hell he was going to track him down and tell him now. He could make dinner tonight, break it to him then … except no, that seemed awful too. He was going to have to think of a better way to break it to him.

“So what now, genius?” he asked himself. He wished he knew.

Did the thought he might die actually bother him? Or was it the method? He wouldn’t mind death if it was fast; the thought of a slow death made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Not like that; any way but that.

The best thing for it was distraction. And who better to pursue a hopeless case than a man who was a hopeless case himself? He started the car and headed out towards the Eagle, hoping the rest of the day was better from here on out.

It could be worse, but he was seriously hoping the universe was done fucking him for now.

****

Holden was just trying to decide if he wanted to throw frozen blueberries into his smoothie when there was a knock at his door.

That was weird, mainly because he rarely if ever had unannounced visitors. Oh, sometimes Roan came over with little warning, usually when there was a situation, but it didn’t sound like Roan. When he knocked, he usually shook the door in its frame. His little segues into Hulk-dom sometimes made itself known in the oddest places.

Curious, he approached, wondering if he should grab his gun first. Oh sure, he wasn’t an infected, and he wasn’t sure any of these fundie haters even knew who he was (he made damn sure he was a difficult man to know and find – he even paid his rent under a fake identity), but these days you couldn’t be too sure. He knew the “kill the cats” bastards were just trying to scare people into submission, but they were just making him angrier by the second. Maybe it was being a preacher’s son and knowing exactly what kind of hypocritical, nasty bastards they actually were, and how little they genuinely thought of their loyal followers, but perhaps he was just projecting. He supposed there were some good God boys out there, but any that preached hate and homicide were instantly ruled out.

He glanced out his peep hole, approaching it from the side so anyone waiting for a light shift would just be shooting through the door, but he was surprised by who he saw. If this was an FCC member, he’d undergone a serious brainwashing.

Holden unlocked the door and opened it wide enough to lean against the door frame. “Hey little boy, you lost?”

Scott Murray, the way too cute hockey player, seemed a little thrown off by the statement. Good Canadian boy, was he? He’d witnessed hockey fights and heard a couple of things to the contrary. He chuckled nervously and scratched his forehead before saying, “Sorry to just drop by like this, I was hoping to talk to you. Is this a bad time?”

“No, I guess not. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

He stopped staring at his chest – until he opened the door and felt the cool air, Holden forgot he was wearing nothing but the sweatpants he stepped into after his shower (well, it wasn’t like nudity was uncommon for him …) – and gave him a curious, almost wary look. “Huh?”

Holden opened the door wide and made a sweeping arm gesture towards the interior of his apartment. “My casa is your casa.”

For a moment he looked like he might turn and run away. But he gathered his courage like a good little macho man and came in. Holden had to swallow a laugh. Oh, it was too easy playing with the nervous and shy, and too damn fun too. As soon as he shut the door, he asked, “Who told you where I lived?” He tried not to sound hostile, but he was curious.

“Oh, um, Diego, that paramedic? I kinda lied to him, I said Roan wanted us to work on something together, but I didn’t know where you were, and Roan wasn’t answering his phone.”

“I’ll give you credit for plausibility. That sounds like Roan.”

“I thought so.”

He walked back to the kitchenette, wondering if Scott was watching his ass. Well, did they look any good in these sweatpants? He couldn’t remember. “Can I offer you a drink? I’m making a smoothie, I’m sure there’ll be extra.”

“Um, no thanks. Can I, uh, sit down?”

“What, you don’t sit in your own home? Of course you can sit down. Just don’t put your feet up on my couch or I’ll cut you.”

Scott laughed nervously, and whatever he said after that was lost in the whir of the blender. When it stopped, and he was pouring the smoothie into a glass, Scott tried again. “So, um, I was wondering … um …”

“If I’m a prostitute? Yes. What else can I help you with?” He turned around to see Scott just staring at him from his couch with a look somewhere between surprise and disbelief. He sipped from his smoothie to keep from laughing.

Scott actually looked small in his civilian clothes, a pair of loose jeans, a t-shirt advertising some skate shop he’d never heard of (had he heard of any skate shops?) and a black leather jacket, and the innocent look on his face made him look barely old enough to shave. Of course he really wasn’t that old, was he? It was easy to forget, just like it was easy to forget how much of his hockey gear wasn’t actually him. That stuff added about fifteen pounds to a guy. Still, what he did have of body mass was mostly solid muscle; if he had a single ounce of fat, it wasn’t visible. “Um, wow,” he finally said, running a hand nervously through his shaggy black hair. “I guess Diego was right about you.”

“Oh? What did he say?”

“He said you had no shame.”

“Shame is for the weak. Do I look weak to you?”

It took a moment for Scott to look at him, but his eyes were furtive and skittish. Poor boy. Holden wasn’t sure if he should comfort him or torment him. “No.”

“There you go.” He leaned on the counter of the kitchenette, looking out into the living room, so there was a physical barrier to mimic the psychological and emotional one between them. He couldn’t help but wonder where this conversation was going to go, and yet he was curious to play out the line for a bit.

“I thought you were Roan’s assistant.”

“I am. But that’s a part time thing at best. And I’m not just any old hooker, but one of those high class prostitutes that you hear about in various political scandals. I have a page on the agency’s web site and everything. Awesome picture of me, if I don’t say so myself.”

His look was dubious, like he thought he was kidding. “I thought those were only female.”

“Generally. But not in big cities with sizable gay populations. I mean, there are high class male hookers in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans … and don’t even ask about San Francisco. But you probably guessed that.”

“I guessed nothing. I’m surprised by this.”

“Why?”

“You just … I guess I imagine male hookers as …”

“Twinks? Transvestites? Scrawny little HIV victims? Strung out junkies? Sexually abused train wrecks? Give me the high sign when I get close.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to offend you -”

“You think this is offended? Sweetheart, when I’m offended, you will know. The taste of blood will be a major giveaway.”

That made Scott smile, like he thought it would. Macho men generally responded to macho, good or bad. “See, that’s why I’m having a hard time with this.”

“What, ’cause I’m not a victim type?”

“I guess. I’m not sure that’s what I was going for …”

“Look, I sell myself, sure, but I’m not a doormat. I didn’t start out as some club kid pimped out by his sugar daddy. I knew what I was getting into when I got into it, and I did my time on the street. You survive there by either adopting the colors of a predator, or attaching yourself remora like to a much bigger fish than you.”

He weighed this carefully, with the slightest twitch of his eyebrow. Scott did have those great, eerily clear blue eyes, the kind that always reminded Holden of Husky dogs. It made him seem more innocent than he probably was. “You gonna make me guess what you did?”

“My street name is Fox. Does that help at all?”

He considered that a moment, and finally remembered that a fox was indeed a predator. They were small and considered cute by some, which was probably why people forgot what they actually were. Did that explain why some people forgot what he was too? Well, no; he wasn’t small, and no one had ever called him cute. “I guess it does,” Scott finally admitted, and looked at him with more obviously critical eyes. There was no intent to offend, though; he was simply scrutinizing him, looking for some crack in his armor that would explain him. He wished Captain Canada good luck, ’cause he was going to need it. “I still don’t understand why you sell yourself. You seem smart, you seem tough. So … why?”

He shrugged. “Why not? It’s good money.”

“You can’t do something else for money?”

“Who said it was all about money?”

Scott stared at him in bewilderment. “Didn’t you?”

“No. I gave you one reason out of many. Gotta look out for those little details, they tell you more about a person than you might realize.”

He shook his head and stood up, flinging his hands up as if lobbing a heavy gun overboard. “This is a mind fuck. You’re mind fucking me.”

“I mind fuck everyone. It’s a little freebie.”

Those crystal clear eyes locked onto his again, and Holden watched a current of anger sizzle and fly by. Maybe he wasn’t on ‘roids – he was too scrawny, his skin too clear, his muscles too realistic for it – but something kept his temper close to the surface. Could have just been years of playing hockey; Scott wasn’t one to fight a lot, but he did fight, and he grew up in an atmosphere that didn’t frown on it. Fighting was to hockey as homoerotic ass grabbing was to football – something done without a lot of thought. “Is that why you’re Roan’s assistant? To irritate people until they talk?”

“No, that’s just a lovely little side benefit.”

He gave him a stony look, his eyes like agates. “You enjoy this, don’t you?”

“Fucking with people? Sure. Who doesn’t?”

Ooh, he didn’t like that. His mouth twisted in irritation as he turned towards the door. “I give up. Why did I even come here?”

“’Cause you wondered how much I charged.”

That made him stop dead, his back stiffening like someone just put ice down his shirt. “What?”

“Oh, come on. We’re both adults here, and I’m not gonna rat you out to your team. That’s part of what you pay me for when you hire me: privacy and silence. There are cheaper hustlers, but with me you get a guarantee of no diseases, and discretion. I’m not going to tell on you to your wife, girlfriend, or co-workers, and if you become big and famous someday, I’m not going to out you on Oprah and write a tell all memoir about how you liked me to fuck you in a clown mask. I may be a whore, but I’m not that kind of whore. I do have standards. Play fair with me, and I play fair with you. No games, no bullshit.”

His expression was studiously blank, as if he was trying to give nothing away. He was trying, but failing. “Clown mask?”

“People have weird kinks; I don’t judge. Although clowns are freaky.”

“You know I don’t hafta pay for sex, right?”

“Oh yeah. You’re gorgeous and an athlete, two bonuses in the getting laid sweepstakes. But I also know you’re locally fairly well known, and meeting guys has an extra layer of peril.”

He scoffed, and his half smile was attractive and somewhat convincing. “I have a girlfriend.”

“Many of my clients do; that’s so not the point. You’re bi, we both know it, so what’s with the pose? Drop it, hon, we’re all friends here.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “Are we?”

Holden flashed him one of his more seductive smiles. “I’d like to think so. When’s the last time you were with a man? In a Biblical sense.”

“I thought the Bible frowned on that.”

That made him chuckle. “You’re talking to a preacher’s son here. The Bible frowns on many things, and yet seems good on slavery and selling your daughters, so I’m thinking it’s schizophrenic at best.”

“You’re a preacher’s son? Wow. How come almost every gay guy I meet comes from an ultra religious home?”

“You’ve noticed too, huh?”

“Yeah. My first boyfriend was a Mormon.”

“You have Mormons in Canada?”

“I know, right? But he was cute. Couldn’t shoot for shit, though.”

“He was a hockey player too?”

“No, lacrosse. He initially wanted me to teach him how to play, but I saw through that pretty quickly.”

Perhaps this was why he sort of liked him, beyond him being pretty damn hot – they had a lot in common. “I used to be a jock, you know. I was the star baseball pitcher at my tony private Christian school. My first boyfriend was the captain of the swim team.”

Scott chuckled. “It’s always the swim team.”

“Hey, it allows the fussy gay boy to wax his body hair and have a legitimate reason for it.”

“I suppose.”

“So how long has it been?” He knew he was pushing it. He had no idea how comfortable Scott was with his sexuality, although the fact that he was still in the closet suggested some discomfort. Was it all career related? He guessed not. Scott struck him as surprisingly reasonable for a semi-pro athlete, enough that Holden wondered why he would put off by his own sexuality, and why he went the jock route. Then again, some people wondered the same thing about him being a prostitute, so it all evened out.

He seemed torn between staying and leaving, but Scott seemed to come to some internal decision and stood his ground. “Six months.”

He let out a low whistle, shaking his head while giving him one of his sliest smiles. “Nasty. I don’t know if I could go that long without sex.”

“I’ve had sex. I got a girlfriend, remember? It’s just …” he shifted his weight from foot to foot as he ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it adorably. “It’s different with a man, y’know? I mean, I’m fine with women most of the time, but every now and then …”

“You want raw, animalistic, no strings attached sex? Hell, that’s the only kind I like.”

They held each other’s gaze for a very long time, a silent battle of potentialities, desire, and awkwardness. Would it be awkward if he took Scott on as a client, since he was part of Roan’s inner circle of super freaks? Maybe for Scott, but it wouldn’t be for him; he had no problems separating his work from the rest of his life. There was Fox and there was Holden, and while they were closely related, they were still very different.

Scott lied to most of his teammates (surely the unfathomable Grey and terminally weird Tank knew, and obviously didn’t care), so why couldn’t he lie to Roan? The only problem was Scott seemed to idolize Roan. He could feel weird around him. Oh, so fucking what? That was his hang up.

Scott finally admitted, “I don’t know if I could do that.”

“You’d be surprised what you’re capable of.” He opened a drawer by the sink, and after rummaging around, found one of his business cards. All it had on it was the web address of his escort agency page and one of his private cell numbers (no name, nothing else – if you got the card, you knew what it was and why), so if anyone found it, they’d have no idea what it was. Unless they looked up the web address, then he was screwed.

Holden held out the card to him. “Change your mind, give me a call.”

Scott studied the plain card, looking at the few things on the front and flipping it over to see if there was anything on the back, before meeting his eyes again. “I couldn’t just ask you out for a beer?”

He almost laughed, but he seemed half serious. “I don’t know. You could try.”

“I could, I guess,” he said, but only shot him a small, somewhat embarrassed smile before leaving his apartment.

Funny. He could totally see why Roan liked him.