by Andrea Speed
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 Dylan’s “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 lying 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 Roan’s 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 toward 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 Roan had 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.
Book Two
Bloodletting
1
Signify
EVERYONE had at least some dirty little secrets they hid from their 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.”
That made him laugh, settling back on the mattress, turning toward Dylan. It was way too early in the morning, not even seven, but Roan felt surprisingly awake. He’d accidentally woken Dylan up when he came upstairs, but he didn’t seem to be holding that against him. Yet.
“I’m not the one who’s a Trekker.”
“I am not a Trekker,” Dylan protested. His blackish-brown eyes had a haze of sleep, but they also had a sparkle of annoyance and mirth that Roan loved to see. “I just think Avery Brooks has a sexy voice. Are you denying that he has a sexy voice?”
He had him there. And from the way Dylan’s leg slowly rubbed against his, he knew it. “Okay, yeah, he has a sexy voice. But I’m supposed to believe that’s the only reason you were watching?”
“Was another reason necessary?”
Again, he had him. Arguing with Dylan could be a very difficult thing, and not only because he had patience that would perturb a television golf commentator. Roan reached over and brushed some of Dylan’s black hair off his forehead. It could get wavy and unruly when there was high humidity, and right now the rain was sluicing down outside like it was being blasted from a fire hose. There was no real reason to, except it was nice to feel the silky strands of it, to feel the heat of his body infused into his hair. “You’re so shallow,” Roan jokingly accused.
Dylan laughed, placing a warm hand on his chest. “Didn’t you get the memo? All gay guys are shallow.”
“We are? Damn it, that’s what I get for not being subscribed to the newsletter.”
Dylan slid his hand up to his throat and leaned against him, his body warm and hard against his. For no reason at all, Roan had been vaguely horny when he came home from the stakeout, and now he was really horny. Dylan could do that to him.
“You’re a bad gay. I’m starting to think you’re an undercover straight guy.”
“Those are fighting words,” Roan replied in mock rage, before giving him a passionate kiss. Dylan was a good kisser, for which he was glad. Some guys didn’t like to kiss, and he didn’t get that at all. Anybody could fuck, but being a good kisser was a talent.
They were just getting into it when the phone rang. Roan sighed and complained, “Cockblocked by the phone. Wanna bet it’s Focus On The Family, or some Satanic organization like?”
“You think they get on the phone as soon as they sense gay men are making out?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Roan rolled over and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?”
“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” Gordo asked, his voice gruff with the vestiges of sleep.
There was a dirty joke there, and he almost made it, but Gordo sounded too grim for humor at the moment. “No. Why?”
“We gotta ugly scene down at 212 Madison Court. Get here as soon as you can, and skip
breakfast.”
Roan rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Cat killing?”
“Yeah. It’s on the loose too, we didn’t find one here.”
“Shit. Give me a few minutes, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
As he dropped the receiver back in the cradle, Dylan looked at him with great sympathy. “Gordon?”
“Yeah, sorry. Homicide stops for no man.” He kissed him on the forehead before sliding out of bed, and only then did his weariness actually hit him between the shoulder blades. He had been up all night on a stakeout, feeling exhausted there the last couple of hours, yawning and occasionally punching himself in the leg to stay awake. He bet he had a couple of nice bruises to look forward to later.
Dylan rolled over on his side and pulled the blankets up, snuggling under the covers in a way that made Roan jealous and annoyed. Goddamn it, why couldn’t he sleep now? “Good luck. Wear something waterproof.”
“They perfected those full-body condoms yet?” he asked, pulling jeans and a T-shirt out of the dresser. No need to get fancy for a crime scene.
“Not that I know of.”
As soon as Roan pulled on the shirt, he recognized the smell as Dylan. In the dark he’d grabbed one of his shirts, but fuck it, it was clean, and none of the guys at the scene would know it wasn’t his. It was just a plain royal-blue T-shirt. It didn’t say “Property of Boyfriend” anywhere on it. He knew the jeans were his, though, as they felt worn in a way that none of Dylan’s jeans were. Probably because he didn’t hang onto clothes until they dissolved in the washer. Why, Roan didn’t know—he was a starving artist, right? He should be the one hanging onto clothes until they were rags.
He’d left his boots downstairs, so he went back down to put them on and grab a dry coat from the coat tree, as the one he’d worn earlier tonight was still sopping wet. In lieu of a hood, he slapped his deliberately cliché fedora on and headed out to the garage.
He wanted to take his bike, mainly because he only used Paris’s cars (and they were Paris’s cars, and he’d always think of them that way) for stakeouts and tails, but it was still pouring, and along with getting soaked, his visibility would be shit. Better to wrap himself in steel, in case he hit someone or someone hit him. He took the GTO, just because it was the first car he came to in the garage.
Madison Court was a street where one of the new housing subdivisions had sprung up like weeds in the formerly vacant lot, about five miles away from his quiet, isolated house. The rural countryside was slowly being gobbled up by developers who slammed in these prefabs and overpriced them, hoping to convince people they were “luxury” because they had a back deck, despite the fact that they were a single arm’s length removed from their neighbor.
The houses that lined Madison Court like a picket fence were row-house-style homes painted in a strangely drab array of earth tones, from a wan taupe to an anemic sea-foam green, conformity at its bleakest. Thankfully there were so many police vehicles out in front of 212 that he found it easily amongst the lines of houses that looked numbingly the same.
The police had formed a barricade with their cars, blocking off easy access to the front lawn as spools of yellow crime scene tape were unfurled and secured. Despite the early morning hour and the small monsoon, there were gawkers—most had the good sense to peek from windows or at least stand just inside their doorways, but a couple of brazen ones stood out on the sidewalk across the street, hunkered under umbrellas.
The cops setting up the crime tape recognized him and waved him on toward the front door, which was slightly ajar. The lawn was supersaturated, becoming the suburban equivalent of quicksand, water spilling from the grass and onto the asphalt. There were two vehicles in the driveway: a dark blue Acura, and in front of it a meat wagon, with a plump Asian man he recognized as working for the ME’s office sitting in the driver’s seat, writing on a clipboard. Roan knew this scene must have been horrible, because he had barely stepped onto the sodden lawn, the grass and mud squelching beneath his boots, when the smell hit him.
Roan had to turn away momentarily, the smell of so much carnage making him feel dizzy, nauseated, hungry, and repelled. It was blood and torn flesh, the stink of death and the early hint of decay. He had to breathe through his mouth for a moment, tasting the air a bit but also tasting the rain, which was still unseasonably warm. For a moment, it tasted like blood.
He finally got accustomed to the smell—or at least as accustomed to it as he was ever going to get—and headed toward the door. Gordo appeared in the open doorway before he reached the poured-concrete steps. “And we thought the smell was bad. I bet it’s real hell for you.”
“You can’t imagine.” He probably couldn’t, any more than Roan could imagine what it was like to have “normal” smelling. As far as he was concerned, his way of smelling was completely normal. It was everybody else who was fucked.
Gordo stood aside as he entered the home, which was nothing special: white walls, sand-colored carpet, furniture that basically matched, and a flat-screen TV that was probably the most expensive piece in the living room. Blood striated the carpet and walls in dark lines, all leading to the open archway of the kitchen, where dark arterial blood pooled like spilled ink on the white and blue tile. The forensic team was still buzzing around like bees, although Seb was off in one corner, discussing something with the head of the team, Slab (Lise Slavin).
“The neighbor next door realized the back door was ajar,” Gordo said, pointing at the door just visible at the edge of the kitchen. “There’d been break-ins around the area, so when no one replied, they called the cops and reported it. A prowler checked it out, and found the vic in the kitchen, swimming in a pool of what must have been over half his blood volume. Considering the blood out here, we figure the initial attack was in the living room, but it all ended in the kitchen, whether he was finally brought down there or dragged there by the cat.”
“Any ID yet?”
“Nope. The guy was torn to shit. The cat shredded his face and chest like cheese. His left hand was also gnawed off. We found a part of his thumb, but that’s it so far.”
“Probably all you’ll find. The cat probably ate the rest.”
Gordo looked away, suppressing a shudder. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He composed himself a second, but Roan thought he looked terrible. Sure, he’d probably been woken up for this call, but he looked weary and haggard, the lines of his face deeper than usual, his jaw taut enough to break concrete.
“Can you tell us what kinda cat we’re looking for? We weren’t able to pull a decent paw print out of the blood or the back lawn.”
Roan closed his eyes and tried very hard to sift through all the scents, get past the blood and death and fear that soured the air like spilled ammonia. With so many people here, bringing with them the smells of cigarettes and coffee, forensic chemicals and deodorant, aftershave and mouthwash, it made it difficult. (Someone had smoked pot recently. Someone on the forensic team, or one of the cops? He couldn’t say right now. They’d covered it up fairly well, but not enough for his nose.)
“Leopard,” he told Gordo. “The vic’s a cougar strain.”
Roan opened his eyes to find Gordo staring at him in surprise. “The vic? Are you saying he’s infected.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No! We didn’t even find a cage here!”
Now that was weird. Roan concentrated on the leopard smell as best he could and followed it, a thin thread of neon among a spiderweb of dark threads of scent. He went up a narrow staircase to the second floor, Gordo following him, and went to a room at the end of the hall. He thought it might be a bedroom, but swinging open a surprisingly heavy door revealed a room with no furniture, save for a flattened old beanbag sitting deflated in a corner under high shelves. There was a window covered with burglar bars. “This was a funky place,” Gordo admitted, as Roan looked at the door. It had been reinforced on the inside with thin plates of metal. “We figured it was some kinda safe room.”
“It’s an ad hoc cage,” Roan said. “The bars are on the inside of the window. It’s to keep something in, not keep people out.”
Gordon scanned the room, looking for any sign of cat occupation. The threadbare carpet was a ’70s burnt orange, one corner of it torn up to the nap. If Roan had been the cat in this room, he’d have torn it to shreds instantly just for being as ugly as fuck. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look like it.”
“I’ve seen people do it before. Some people are really offended by the notion of a cage, and just try and cat-proof a room.” He saw a shadow on the wall and went to have a look at it. Somebody had tried to spackle and paint over claw marks, but they had done so poorly.
Gordo checked out the door, opening it and looking at both sides before scratching his head. “This door wasn’t broken down. It was open.”
“Like the back door?”
“Yeah.” He exchanged a suspicious look with Roan. “What the fuck happened here? We thought the back door was open and the cat came in that way. But it was here all along?”
Roan nodded. The leopard had marked its territory here. He could smell it more strongly in this room than anywhere else in the house so far. “It’s hard to tell, but I swear I scented a woman’s perfume in the hall. I think there were three people in this house; one who transformed into a leopard and killed the man downstairs. Leaving the third one suspiciously AWOL.”
“A setup? Or did they just run for their fucking lives?”