by Andrea Speed
Finally, Trey said, “Thora and Danae never got along. And then there was that thing with Gavin.”
Here was a new name. “Gavin?”
“Gavin Lorimer. He had a thing with Danae before Laurel Springs, and then at the end, he hooked up with Thora. I don’t think that lasted, though.”
Roan thought hard and recalled a G. mentioned in Thora’s rehab memoir—right, he was the “Pauly Shore for the ’00s.” That must have been Gavin. “A himbo?” he asked, just for confirmation.
Trey nodded meekly. “Big time. Cute, but kinda… vacant.”
Roan could have run his name, found all the info in a few seconds, but with a compliant Trey here, why bother? “Do you know where Gavin lives?”
He shrugged. “Somewhere in the Hillfield district.”
“Hillfield?” That was odd. It was downtown and not all that ritzy or exclusive—you’d think a himbo would live somewhere nicer. Hillfield was about a mile away from Panic. Coincidence? (Yeah, probably.)
“I know. His mom wanted him to live on his own or something, stand on his own two feet for a while. I think Gavin and his stepfather fought a lot.”
“Does he work?”
“Gavin? I don’t know. I kinda doubt it. Unless you can drink and mooch as a career.” Trey sounded disdainful, suggesting that, while he clearly had an anger and sexual identity problem, he at least had a solid work ethic.
“So he’s a trust-fund brat?”
“Or living off his mother still, just not living with her.”
Roan nodded, not at all surprised. His face still throbbed and burned, but a little less than before. He was accustomed to having his bones broken, thanks to his infected status, and he was pretty sure he’d be healed soon enough, since he had just been through another partial change. The bruise might stay, though, and he wondered what he was going to tell Paris about it. “Do you know why Thora and Gavin broke up?”
“No. So, um, you’re infected?”
“I’m a virus child, yeah.”
“What about, um…?”
“Yes, he’s infected too. Tiger strain.”
“What? Oh my God. He didn’t look—” Roan shot him a sidelong glance, and Trey cringed ever so slightly. “Not that you do. Not until your, uh, jaw distends….”
“Save it. I don’t give a shit what you think about me.”
He nodded, and almost seemed relieved. “Okay then.” Trey rubbed his throat, as if it hurt. Roan could see the discoloration in the shape of his hand on Trey’s throat, and then there were the tiny marks of his fingernails. Some of them looked to be leaking blood, but since rainwater was still drizzling down Trey’s neck, he honestly couldn’t tell. He really had wanted to rip Trey’s fucking jugular out. The lion still thought he should just rip it out with his teeth. It didn’t like getting hurt.
“Where does Danae live?”
Trey shook his head. “I think her family has a mansion in Southwick, but as far as I know, she left for France after rehab and hasn’t been back.”
“Why France?”
“They have a home there.”
Roan sighed. “The rich really are different. So she and Thora didn’t get along, huh? Any reason?”
He shrugged again. “They both thought that the other was a rich bitch.”
That was probably enough. Lifelong feuds had been started over less.
They sat for a long minute of silence, letting the percussive sound of rain on metal fill the void. Trey shot him several anxious glances before saying, in a small voice, “I guess I’m not going to get my gun back.”
He chuckled. “Oh, fuck no.”
Trey shifted nervously in his seat, and really looked like he wanted to bolt, but didn’t dare. Which was good, but also proved how broken he was. Roan wondered once again what he looked like when he partially transformed. Sure, Gordo gave him a partial description, but frankly, for a cop, it was a piss-poor one. Then again, he was probably terribly freaked out at the time. And part of Roan really didn’t want to know what he looked like when he was mostly human, but slightly not. He thought if he saw himself that way, he might not ever go out in public again.
“What are you gonna do with me?” Trey wondered.
“I was thinking of burying you in a shallow grave.” He glanced at him, and noticed Trey’s shoulders sag. Roan scowled at him. “Oh give me a fucking break. I already said I wasn’t gonna kill you.”
“So what now?”
“I’m thinking.” And he was, but there just weren’t many options, were there? If Trey had tried to run them down last night—and after this, he suspected that Trey was the guilty party—he would be arrested in a short amount of time. He could have charges added to that roster, but for some reason he was no longer interested. Again, he thought Trey was pathetic. He was a sad, damaged little man who could’ve really hurt someone—they were probably all lucky that Trey picked on him. (The way his cheek was aching, though, he didn’t feel lucky.) “You have a choice. You turn yourself in to the police now, or you go check yourself into a mental hospital until you can figure out what’s behind all these psychotic outbursts of yours.”
Trey stiffened, his expression darkening. “I’m not crazy.”
“No, you’re not. You just can’t control your anger, and you hate yourself so much you can’t stand it. It must be painful to be in your skin.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you mean.” The anger was creeping back into his voice, but in a minor way. He was still holding back, still frightened of bringing the beast out once more. Trey still loathed him, but he knew in a straight fight he couldn’t win, and wrestling the gun out of Roan’s possession was not advised. He might have also been afraid of getting infected himself, even though he could hardly get the virus from Roan by being scratched or bitten, even if he was in lion form. (It was blood or semen or nothing—and Roan had no intention of fucking him or bleeding all over him.)
“Yeah, Trey, you do. Tell me, do you belong to a family that openly reviles gays? Your parents religious?”
He looked out the passenger window, lips so thin and pale they were hardly a seam in his face. “Baptist.”
“Oh holy fucking Christ, that explains everything. Go now, check yourself into a mental hospital, and try and figure out if going through life loathing yourself and every man who turns you on is worth whatever inheritance you could get from your family. Ask yourself if annihilating all sense of self is worth taking a family job that you don’t want. You’re fucking miserable, Trey—it’s obvious to everyone. You’re a hard worker; you don’t need whatever your family can give you.”
Trey looked at him, eyes narrowing in contempt. “Oh yeah—who needs respect? Who needs to be a productive member of society? Who needs a family?”
“You can make your own family. You don’t need one that won’t accept you.”
His glare was caustic. “You get one family in life—one. The rest is bullshit.”
“Better a fake family than one who can’t accept you, that would hate you if you ever bothered to tell the truth.”
“Just what I’d expect from a faggot. Can I go now?”
Roan made a show of thinking about it, scrutinizing him in an unfriendly way. “Where are you going?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Rosewood. Is that acceptable to you?”
Rosewood was a mental health facility. He wasn’t sure that Trey would actually go there, but right now he didn’t care. He was probably an hour or two away from arrest anyway. “Yeah, fine. And if I ever see your face again, I’ll smash it flat.”
Trey continued to give him an evil look, but he scrambled rather hastily out of the car, slamming the door after him and disappearing into the rainy, gray parking lot. Roan pulled out his cell phone and called Matt, just to ask if Thora and Gavin had dated, and what broke them up. Matt confirmed that they had “hooked up,” but he wouldn’t call it a proper relationship. He didn’t know why they broke up, except she told Matt on the phone that he was a complete
fucking bastard. The problem was she said that about all her boyfriends, and Matt could sympathize, since he inevitably said that about his boyfriends as well. The one thing that united gay men and straight women was a common enemy.
Matt did have some information about Gavin that Trey either didn’t have or didn’t volunteer. He had a favorite hangout, an upscale lounge inside the extremely expensive, pretentious restaurant Paradiso. A relative of Gavin’s was co-owner of the joint, so he had his own barstool and a running tab. Roan was slightly jealous—he never had a tab anywhere. He was a private detective too; wasn’t the stereotype that they had tabs at dingy bars and loose women in every port? (What he’d do with the loose women he had no idea, but it was the principle of the thing.)
He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror, and saw no hint of the cat that was still itching to come out, but he did see a bruise underneath his left eye, reddish and slowly turning purplish-black, swelling and slightly puffy. It was in a rough, slender, ovoid shape, the butt of the gun distorted slightly. The bruise would heal faster for him than it would for anyone else, but it would still be around for a day or three. What a pisser. He touched the bruise at the edges, wincing at the dull but intense pain that coaxed from it, but figured his bone had probably healed already or was healed enough to make the break negligible. That was the one thing his lion was good for. Well, that and pants-wetting scary homicidal surges of rage. Animals had no modulation of emotions—when they were angry, things got torn to pieces. He hoped Trey knew how lucky he was, but somehow he doubted it.
A quick search turned up Gavin’s address, and it didn’t take long for him to drive there. Gavin lived in an apartment complex that was shaped like a bunker—low (five stories, tops) and excessively square, with even, rectangular windows set at rigid intervals. It had probably once been white but was now the color of dirty cotton. It had all the outward charm of an industrial school, and the entire area looked worn-down and depressed. Why would the Pauly Shore of the ’00s be living here?
You had to buzz people to be let in the building, which was no problem at all (you just buzzed randomly until someone let you in), but Gavin either wasn’t home or didn’t answer his buzzer. Roan decided to work his way down to Paradiso to see if Gavin was drinking his afternoon away.
It took him a while to get into Paradiso. The place was so fucking snobby that even though he just wanted to see if his “friend” was in the bar, they wouldn’t let him in because he wasn’t dressed properly, and he suspected that the fresh bruise on his face additionally alarmed the maître d’. He looked like a lowlife, and therefore he wasn’t their type of customer. Finally they let him peek in, with heavy chaperoning, and he didn’t see Gavin. (Matt had e-mailed him a picture. Gavin resembled a young Jeff Bridges crossed with a traditional California surfer boy.) He decided to check in later, but maybe he’d bring Paris with him to schmooze the maître d’. He wasn’t sure if the guy was gay or not (although he did have a bit of a lisp), but Paris was just so damn pretty that he would fit into such a posh place with ease. Unlike him, who—if the maître d’s withering glance could be taken as solid fact—would be more at home in a soup kitchen, or perhaps a trailer park.
He checked his messages, and Doctor Rosenberg had called. He erased her message without listening to it, as he really didn’t care what she had to say—if Paris wasn’t going to be included in the trials, he had no interest in them. He had a time-share worked out with the cat; he really didn’t care about finding a chemical solution to it.
He headed home, mainly so he could put an ice pack on his bruise and see if he could bring the swelling down before he had to go back to Paradiso. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell Paris about it, but what was wrong with the truth? A minor pistol whipping. Yeah, he’d let Trey walk, but he’d probably be in a holding cell before nightfall, so he didn’t care. Maybe also he was a little embarrassed at how close he came to totally losing it and lioning out on the asshole. He pulled it back, but he’d really wanted to rip Trey’s throat out.
Roan faintly heard the stereo outside the house—Paris had A Perfect Circle on now—but it wasn’t too loud, so he was a little surprised that Par didn’t answer when he knocked on the locked door. But it was possible Par was upstairs, so he didn’t let it bother him, and dug out his keys to let himself in. “Hey, honey, I’m homo,” he shouted, quoting a Pansy Division song. Well, he thought it was funny.
There was no reply, and he thought maybe Par had gone to take a nap—Par was sleeping a lot lately—and he’d be able to escape the conversation about his bruise until later. But once he walked into the living room, he saw, on the far side of the couch, a can of Pepsi on the carpet, sitting in a dark brown puddle of soda, most of which had already soaked in. Since when would Paris drop a can of soda and just leave it there?
His gut tightened, and he felt a sickening dread as he went around the couch and saw why Paris hadn’t bothered to clean up the spill.
Paris was sprawled face down on the floor.
16
Tapping the Vain
IMMEDIATELY he went to Paris’s side, turning him over onto his back, making sure he was breathing and had a fairly even pulse. He did, which was a relief, but then Roan wasn’t sure what to do. Call an ambulance? That would be the logical thing, but he was pretty sure Paris would resent him for doing it. Assuming he regained consciousness.
“Paris,” he said loudly, giving him a light smack on the cheek. Did that ever wake anyone up? “Paris! Can you hear me?”
He’d just pulled out his cell phone when Paris moved, letting out a small sigh, and Roan waited anxiously as his eyelids fluttered open. For a moment he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes slowly coming back into focus. “Why am I on the floor?” Then his eyes scudded over to Roan’s face, and he gasped. “And how did you get that bruise? Did you get in a fight?”
“I’m okay. What happened to you?”
Paris sat up, and Roan helped him, propping him against the couch. “Nothing happened to me,” he claimed, although he noted with a scowl that he was sitting on the floor. “Look, I just… I felt dizzy, I figured it was a caffeine rush, so I was gonna sit down….”
“And you didn’t make it,” Roan guessed, filling in the rest of the sentence for him. Paris still looked abnormally pale, and it looked like a bit of sweat was starting to gather at his hairline. Roan put a hand on his face, this time feeling it, not just smacking it. “You’re hot.”
“Well, duh.”
“No, I mean you feel feverish. Maybe I should call Dee.”
Par fixed him with a stern, almost paternal glare. “I have a temperature. Big whoop. It’s not a national emergency.”
“It is if you passed out.”
Par reached up and touched his face, letting his thumb trace the area just beneath the bruise. It took everything in Roan not to wince, as there was just a little bit of pain, even though Paris was being very gentle. The heat seemed to be radiating from his hand. “Maybe we should call Dee for you.”
He frowned at Paris, aware of what he was doing. “It’s a bruise; I need an ice pack. You know it’ll be gone in a couple of days. When you start collapsing for no reason, though, it’s time to call in the experts.”
The look on Paris’s face morphed into something he really didn’t want to see. It was a mixture of pity and love, sorrow and sympathy, all conflicting with a slightly feverish glaze in his eyes. “Hon, you know as well as I do if I go to a hospital now, I’m never coming out again. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”
Something tightened in his throat. He really didn’t want to hear this. “Don’t say that.”
“What? It’s the truth, I don’t. And I don’t have a lot of time left here.”
“Please stop.”
Paris’s hand smoothed down Roan’s face, and came to rest on his shoulder as Paris sighed wearily. “I wanted to talk about this last night, but I chickened out. I guess now’s as good a time as any to finally mention it. I’m not
going to survive another transition—”
“Paris—”
“No, listen. I’m running out of time, and I don’t want to die as a tiger in a cage. I was born human, and I want to die one.”
Roan grabbed Par’s arm, feeling the lean but still hard muscle of his bicep. He could remember when he couldn’t quite fit his hand all the way around Paris’s upper arm, but now he could. But it only bothered him because he knew what was no longer there. He was fighting back tears, because he knew what was coming, what Paris was going to ask him, and while he had half expected it, it still wasn’t something he thought he could handle. “You can’t ask me this, Par. I’m not sure I can do it.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything; I wouldn’t put that burden on you. I just want you to be there with me.”
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.” He moved in for a hug then, mainly so Paris didn’t see him struggling not to cry. If he lost it now, he would be all fucked-up for the rest of the day, and he still had a murder to solve and a fucked-up hustler to get out of jail. None of it was as important as Paris was, though, not to him. And Paris had already worked out how he was going to die. While he was off bugging the shit out of people, Paris was here figuring out how—and probably when—he was going to die. It made everything else seem silly and pointless.
Paris hugged him back fiercely, and he bet Paris knew how hard this was for him. It certainly couldn’t have been easy for Par either. God, what was he going to do without him? He couldn’t think about that now either, or he couldn’t function. A couple of tears slipped past his eyelids, but he managed to hold the rest back.
After a moment where they just held each other, the heat coming from Paris sickly and uncomfortable (at what point did a fever become dangerous?), Paris asked, “So how did you get that bruise?”