by Andrea Speed
He rubbed the back of his neck and scanned the rest of the lot, freezing as soon as his eyes fell on a cameraman for Channel Five standing crouched beside an SUV, the helmet-haired “action news reporter” beside him (his name was Chip or Flip or some damn cartoon name). Roan only needed to see the blow-dried wonder’s mouth moving in profile to know he was saying to his cameraman, “Tell me you got that.”
Oh shit.
2
Altered Beast
Roan wondered how he could be so naïve. Did he really think Dylan being angry with him was the worst thing that was going to come of this?
For the first few hours, it was. Dylan had seen the news footage and figured out that he'd put himself front and center, making himself the number one target. He admitted he hadn’t told him that was his plan because he knew it would piss him off, and that didn’t make Dylan any happier. He didn’t even get brownie points for honesty.
Roan assumed he’d be sleeping on the sofa, but no, he hadn’t. Dylan didn’t say it—he never had to say it—but he was terrified of losing Roan; he was afraid Roan was going to up and die on him any second. On the one hand, it was touching; on the other, it was fucking annoying. Dylan accused him of wanting to hasten his own death, which was just the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. What he wanted to do was protect Grant—the rest of it was bullshit. He didn’t know if Dylan believed him or not; ultimately, he didn’t care. Randi had asked him to help her brother, and he was. Dylan could believe it or not. It was his choice.
Roan was woken up at six in the morning by the phone—that was the beginning. The beginning of publicity hell.
It started with local media, but some national media tried to contact him too. He just hung up and unplugged the phone, turning off his cell as well. He had no comment, wanted to do no interviews. He just wanted to be left alone. He turned the sprinklers on to get the local action news team off his lawn.
Fiona volunteered to become his PR person—she told the news people politely to fuck off, on his behalf. Doctor Rosenberg called to cuss him out for almost transforming in spite of his aneurysm warning. (It was hard to tell on camera he was starting to transform; luckily, it just looked like he was jutting his chin out, and for some reason was bleeding from the mouth, but Rosenberg knew what it meant. Sadly, the oddly inhuman jump and show of strength was the thing getting him the attention.) Somebody called from a local production company suggesting that they might be open to turning his life into a film.
Pissed off beyond all measure, he asked Dylan if he wanted to go to Vancouver with him for a week. Dylan, who was starting to get bugged by reporters at Panic (they had found him), happily agreed.
They ended up spending ten days in Vancouver. Roan showed Dylan around and surreptitiously loaded up on painkillers and downers, which were so much cheaper in Canada. They stayed in a nice hotel just off the water, small but quaint and very gay friendly, so they didn’t get any shit over that. Their third night there, as they were sitting on a pier people watching and boat watching, Dylan guessed that this was a special place for Roan and Paris. Roan said it was, but only because Paris was from British Columbia; Roan had come to think of it as a second home. He felt better in Vancouver for no reason he could ever name. He thought if he ever got tired of Washington State, he would move up here.
He thought about paying a visit to Paris’s parents, just to say hello, but ultimately decided against it. What would he do besides remind them that their son was dead far before his time? Best to just leave it.
Roan had never done “touristy things” in Vancouver because he was always with a native who knew where to go if you wanted to score crack at two in the morning, or pick up scalped tickets at ten at night (not that they ever bought crack, but it was good to know). But he did a couple of touristy things with Dylan, at Dyl’s urging, and it was kind of nice to pretend to be brain-dead for a while. They had a really good time, and it was good not to have the subtle but obvious subtext of “You’re gonna die soon” influencing everything.
After ten days, they had no choice but to come back. Dylan could get no more time off work, and Roan’s viral cycle was fast approaching. Fiona had said either it was starting to blow over or people were getting the message that he had no interest in participating in a media circus. She also said she had fielded a couple of really good offers and had written them up in case he wanted to look them over. She was holding out hope he’d do an interview with Anderson Cooper and drag him kicking and screaming out of the closet. (A CNN researcher had called, not Cooper. But Fi insisted she could dream.)
He intended to go back to work, but as soon as he saw a news van in the parking lot, he decided to return home. Instead, he asked Fi to man the office and give him a ring if a genuine client—not a media plant (which had happened)—showed up. He did wonder if, this close to his cycle, he should bother working, but fuck it. If he didn’t die this time out, he still had bills to pay.
As a professional courtesy, Dennis drew up legal papers for him, gratis. He hadn’t told Dylan, but he was leaving him the house and a couple other things. He was leaving stuff to Fi and Dee and Randi as well, and at the last minute he threw in some books and stuff for Holden, as he would appreciate them. He also left a note for Matt, because he still felt bad how that all went down. He learned he was lucky that he had no living family to contest the will, as leaving stuff for your boyfriend wasn’t always seen as legitimate. Roan had no idea leaving stuff to other people was for heteros only, but hey, you learned something new every day.
And while he said he wanted to be ultimately cremated, he had actually left his body to Doctor Rosenberg and her institute. If they wanted to chop him up and see if they could find what made him different from all other virus children, why he didn’t get the same kiss of brain-damaged death as the rest of them, they were free to go nuts. Pulp him in a blender for all he cared. A dead body was just a piece of meat, and dead people didn’t give a shit what you did with them. The bright side of being dead, as far as he could tell, was no longer having to give a shit about anything.
It wasn’t long before he was going out of his mind. He had no idea what was wrong with him. He’d bought a lot of used books at a bookstore in Vancouver, and he had lots of shows to catch up on, but after a pointlessly big breakfast (scrambled eggs with salsa and cheese, bacon, spicy sausage, toast with cinnamon sugar, chai tea liberally cut with cream—fuck it, if he was dying, it wasn’t going to be on a diet), he found himself full of restless energy. He popped a couple of Vicodin, along with the experimental meds Doctor Singh gave him. He had no idea if they were working, if they would prevent an aneurysm, and he wasn’t sure she knew either. All he knew was sometimes they left him with an odd, light-headed feeling that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. As side effects went, this one he didn’t mind.
He’d started working out on his heavy bag, but gently, because he didn’t want to accidentally bring out the lion and he didn’t want to wake Dylan, who had closed the bar last night and hadn't got home until almost four in the morning. He was thinking of quitting the bar, but not until he found another job. Sadly, there wasn’t much out there for an art major, but maybe he could get in at another bar where they would let him wear a shirt.
When the phone rang, Roan let it go to machine, but he heard Doctor Rosenberg cussing at him, so he picked it up. “You were gonna let me go to machine, you bastard,” she carped. “Here I am trying to save your life, and this is the thanks I get. Shmendrek.”
“Hey, you get bugged by the press and answer your damn phone.”
“I have been. I’m the expert in infecteds, remember? They all want to talk about you. Luckily, I get to point out you’re a patient and confidentiality rules prohibit me from discussing you or anything about you. So they go to that shithead Riley, and he makes these outrageous statements like infecteds can take on psychosomatic feline tendencies. What fucking bullshit. I bet he gets a book deal and goes on Doctor Phil.”
He had no idea who
Riley was, but he assumed a rival doctor. “So I’m a psychosomatic lion? Interesting. What about the bleeding?”
“I dunno. Maybe he thinks you bit your lip. Look, you’re gonna go into cycle this week, aren’t ya?”
She really wasn’t much for foreplay. “Yeah. I’m not turning myself in to the hospital.”
“Turn yourself in to me. Come by tomorrow. I’m gonna chemically induce a coma.”
“Pardon?”
“Listen to me: you need more time for the meds you’re on now to work. You know we got safe rooms here, private safe rooms. You’ll still change while in a coma, but it shouldn’t be as hard on your system. If your blood pressure was absurdly low, raising it twofold won’t matter. This will work.”
“You’re guessing.”
“But it’s a good guess. Look, fuck your pride—you wanna live another month or not?”
Man, she was relentless, wasn’t she? That was why he liked her, but also why he hated her at the same time. “Yeah, of course, but—”
“So get your ass down here tomorrow. I’d prefer morning, but, knowing you, I’ll have to settle for afternoon. Now, you gonna do it, or do I tell Dylan?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
He sighed. “Oh, goddamn it.”
“See you tomorrow, Roan. Or else.”
She rang off, and he wondered why he kept her as a doctor. Because she was smarter than everyone else and seemed to treat him like an actual person and not a piece of meat. Surely there was another doctor who was like that. He just hadn’t looked hard enough.
Ah, fuck it. He just liked people who didn’t take shit, and Rosenberg didn’t take shit from anyone. He should have kept in mind that included him.
He’d only been working on the bag for another five minutes when the drugs started to really kick in, and then his cell phone rang. He’d changed the number to one only three people knew: Dylan, Fiona, and Dee (he’d have to give it to Holden one of these days, or Fi would), so he had no problem answering this phone. “Yeah?”
“Oh, you have to come in,” Fi said, keeping her voice low. “We got an actual customer, and Christ on a stick, you hafta look at this guy.”
“Cute?”
“No—huge. I mean, shit, you need a guy your own size to pick on? This may be him. He also has fresh stitches in his chin, but he doesn’t look like an assassin otherwise.”
Fresh stitches in his face? Possible domestic violence and/or bar fight was the most likely answer, but if the guy was a professional troublemaker, he might be wearing his work home with him. “You’re not getting a bad vibe off him, are you?”
“No, he’s been as pleasant as can be. Looks like he’s had his nose broken a while ago. Could he be one of those MMA cage fighters?”
“You tell me. I’m on my way.”
He hung up and a quick sniff told him he hadn’t had enough of a workout to stink, so he simply changed into more presentable clothes and took the bike out, since it was a clear day and it was much easier to outrun news teams on the Buell. The Vicodin gave him a pleasantly mellow feeling.
He parked out behind the cemetery (oddly, there was one across the street from the office park, kind of run-down and overgrown—if it was a statement of some kind, he wasn’t sure what) and walked into work still wearing his mirrored motorcycle helmet, so if there was someone snapping photos in the lot, they got a shitload of nothing. Once inside his office, he took off the helmet.
“Ah, here he is,” Fiona said, gesturing to him, as a huge man got up from the front room’s chair and approached him with his hand out.
He was six foot three at least, maybe two ten, all muscle, his shoulders and chest nearly Paris broad. He was wearing a baggy black T-shirt and baggy jeans, so he wasn’t trying to show off, and his worn Converse sneakers and even more worn brown leather jacket seemed to indicate he either had no money or nothing approaching fashion awareness. He had a beat-up olive-drab backpack slung over one shoulder.
His brown hair was cut short and streamlined, but it did inadvertently highlight a face that had seen many fights. He had the ghost of a white scar on his forehead, something of a divot in his right cheek, a bump on the bridge of a strong nose (definitely suggesting at least one previous break), and those fresh stitches Fi had mentioned, stretching out for an inch and a half in a rough, perpendicular line across his chin. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but his many facial wounds made him interesting to look at and strangely fascinating. His eyes were that odd watery blue you sometimes encountered and could never quite believe was real. He was in his early to mid-twenties at a best guess, but he was one of those guys who had probably never looked boyish.
“Hey, hi, I’m Grey Williams,” the big man said, shaking his hand. He almost crushed his fingers, and Roan knew he was actively trying not to. Hell of a grip. If Roan heard the flatness of his vowels correctly, he was either originally from Minnesota or spent a lot of time there.
“Hello, Roan McKichan. Why don’t we go into my office?”
“Sure,” he agreed amiably. He followed him in, saying a polite “Bye” to Fiona as they went. What the hell was he, a brawling farm boy?
“So what brings you here, Mr. Williams, and who beat the shit out of you?” Roan asked as he shut the door.
Grey looked back at him, surprised and briefly confused. “Huh? Nobody’s—oh! Y’mean the stitches? Nobody hit me, I just stopped a puck with my face. Didn’t mean to, but hey, shit happens.”
For a moment, Roan wasn’t sure Williams had said “puck,” but that was the only thing that made sense. “You a hockey player?”
“Yep, defenseman for the Seattle Falcons.”
Roan sat behind his desk and gestured to the chair in front. Grey sat down, sliding his backpack to the floor. “Oh. Defenseman’s code for 'enforcer,' isn’t it?” The Falcons were a minor league team, or at least they weren’t in the NHL. Roan honestly didn’t know how these things worked, as sports had never been a passion of his. All he knew about hockey he knew from Paris, who, as a Canadian kid, was forced to like it under penalty of death.
Grey chuckled at this. “Can be. Is in my case. What gave it away?”
“Besides you being just incredibly fucking huge? You look like you’ve been in a few fights in your life.”
“Yep, and won all of them. Well, not in the third grade, but I don’t think that counts. Ain’t much of a scorer, but shit, can I hit people.” He grinned with a kind of goofy pride, revealing a missing tooth in the lower half of his mouth, pretty much parallel with part of the stitches. The puck must have taken out a tooth too. Ouch. “And by the way, I gotta say, really impressed by the whole crowd thing. Y’know, where you took out the Nazi and his friend? Really cool.”
The man who had tried to shoot Grant was a self-professed neo-Nazi, along with his bat-wielding pal. They had a manifesto posted on their respective Facebook pages calling infecteds the “Armageddon of the human race,” but best of all, nearly every other word was misspelled. They were so fucking stupid they couldn’t even spell “believe” right. “Just doing my job. Now, what’s this about? I take it you’re not married, so this can’t be about your wife.”
He had lifted his backpack to his lap but froze, cocking his head at Roan curiously. “How d’ya know I’m not married?”
“No ring.”
“Oh.” Grey looked down at his own hand and chuckled faintly. He had big hands, and the knuckles were slightly calloused. He hadn’t been lying about getting into lots of fights, but Roan wondered if they were all on the ice. “Oh yeah. That’s pretty obvious, huh? It’s just, I’ve heard things about you, and I thought you were doing some Sherlock Holmes shit on me.”
“No, no Sherlock Holmes, just basic observation.” He was going to let it go, but damn it, he couldn’t. “What have you heard about me?”
Grey shrugged as he unzipped the backpack. “Just that you look into weird cases, y’know, strange stuff. You don’t scare easy. That right?�
�� The look in his eyes was almost challenging, like he was daring Roan to be honest.
Sure, he was a big boy, but he was going to have to do better than that. “Yeah, it is.”
Grey stared at him for a moment before nodding, as if seeing what he wanted to see in Roan’s eyes, then pulled out a folder held closed with a rubber band stretched precariously around its bulging sides. He placed it on Roan’s desk, right in front of him. “About a year ago, my oldest friend’s sister was killed. She was murdered, execution style, in an alley beside her apartment building by two men. It remains an open case: no suspects, no leads.”