by Andrea Speed
She gave him a dead-eyed stare that was both challenging and disinterested, a sort of bipolar look that only teens and true psychopaths could pull off. “He was a creep. And if he hadn’t run off I’d have dumped his ass. It was sorta flattering at first, but it got old.”
How could abusive behavior be considered flattering? At least he took after dear old dad. “He was good with computers then?”
Again that shrug, that look of bored disaffection. “Guess so. He talked about ’em a lot, talked about setting up an Internet business.”
“What kind of business?”
Another shrug. God, he wanted to throw her diet soda on her just to see if he could startle something genuine out of her. “How the fuck do I know? I didn’t care. Are we done? I have to meet Heaven at Hot Topic in a few minutes.”
“You have no idea where he could have gone?”
Again that starkly bored bipolar look. “No. Are we done?”
He sighed and slumped back in the hard plastic chair, aware that she had given him little worth the trouble of following her Twitter page and running down here. “Yeah, fine.”
She got up and left, not saying anything or giving him a backwards glance. He figured as much. How could she be so jaded so young? He tried to remember if he had been. Maybe, or at least he was heading that way.
He decided to buy something to drink so he could have some pills, but while he was waiting in line, his cell vibrated in his coat pocket. A glance at the readout showed it was Gordo calling him, so he decided to go ahead and answer it. Maybe they knew who had tried to frame the cats for the murder. “Yeah?”
“How close are you to downtown?”
Roan was pretty sure he heard sirens in the background. Oh, this wasn’t good. “North or South?”
“North.”
“Pretty damn close.”
“Get to Stewart and 19th ASAP, and maybe you can beat the SWATs. We have a multiple cat incident inside the Arcadia building, with several wounded, deaths unconfirmed, and a number of cats anywhere between three or a dozen—no one inside the building can decide on a number.”
“Oh fuck.” Arcadia. They’d been in the news lately for their underhanded manner in kicking all infecteds off their policies. They couldn’t technically discriminate, so they’d find little niggling things to get people off their rolls and never pay for anything. They weren’t the only insurance company doing this—in fact, they were all doing it—they were just the most egregious. “How’d they get so many cats in a building?”
“How the fuck do I know, Roan?” Gordo snapped, sounding really pissed off. Not at him, not really, just pissed off at the situation. “Get here if you still have the power to control cats.” Gordo hung up abruptly.
He didn’t have “power” over cats, they were simply afraid of him. But maybe that was considered much the same thing.
Roan got out of line and ran for the exit as soon as he was clear of the crowds. The only way there could be a multiple cat incident in a place like an office building was if it was planned in advance. So basically this was a rampage, but done in animal form. Shit. Why did they have to do this now? People who didn’t already loathe them—a small number—would now.
He avoided as much of the bridge traffic as he could and managed to reach the Arcadia building within eight minutes. They had cordoned Stewart and 19th off to incoming traffic, so he parked over on Madison and ran around the corner. The cops had parked their cars on the sidewalk to make a cordon holding pedestrians back, but they also needed to access the scene and let the paramedics through, so there were spaces to let them through and uniform cops on crowd duty, standing there to keep any unauthorized people from gaining access. He didn’t recognize either cop he saw as he shoved through the crowd, but they must have recognized him as they stood aside and impatiently waved him through, briefly splitting so he could squeeze past them. They weren’t the only ones who recognized him, as some man shouted, “Infecteds suck!” Roan didn’t glance back, he simply held up his middle finger, which earned some ill-tempered grumbling and cursing from the crowd. One man had the decency to laugh.
Gordo and Seb were loitering in the shade of an ambulance. “Still making friends and influencing people?” Gordo asked sarcastically.
“People love me. Now what’s the situation?”
“Same as before. Cats loose in the building, an unknown number, but people have separately identified a cougar and a lion. Someone’s suggested an entire pride, but I’m not sure it works like that. Anyways, the lowest reported floor they’ve supposedly been seen on is the fifth, and all floors below have been evacuated. We believe some people maybe have been injured attempting to corral the cats.”
“Morons.”
“SWAT team ETA is seven minutes, so if you wanna try and save any, get to it.” While Gordo was talking, Seb handed Roan a tranquilizer gun, which he took, if only to convince the SWAT guys that the cats were no longer a threat. He tucked it into the waistband of his pants as Gordo also handed him a radio. “Stay in touch. We’ll give you a heads up when they ingress.”
Roan nodded and spun around, tensed, as something impacted the sidewalk behind him. It was a half-empty Starbucks cup that spewed cold coffee all over the mica-flecked sidewalk in front of the Arcadia building. Gordo pointed into the crowd and barked, “Arrest that asshole.”
One of the boys in blue plunged into the crowd, which parted uneasily, as the man who had thrown it yelled, “You fuckin’ cats are murderers! You should all be drowned!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Gordo snapped. Roan ignored it and headed into the glass-fronted tower of Arcadia. Deciding he and Paris weren’t so bad had done wonders for Gordo’s sympathy toward infecteds.
Roan found himself in an eerily empty lobby, where signs of how much fucking money these people made were everywhere, from the marble floor to the mahogany reception desk and the super-quiet air conditioning system that always kept the lobby just a couple of degrees above arctic chill. He could smell fear and panic, but it was quickly dissipating in the chilled air, and it was all Human. He smelled that no cats had been in the lobby.
How had they gotten in and where had they hidden? Someone who used to be an employee here, or a customer who had been in the building enough to get a solid idea of its layout (perhaps on purpose). They knew where they could go and hide out until the change. And the change took about an hour, give or take a few minutes (not for him, but for everyone else), so they had to be places where no one would go during their change. This was a plan with a lot of “ifs” that shouldn’t have worked with so many cats, and yet it seemed to have worked. Was it an inside job? Did they have a current employee (infected or not) helping them? You’d think they’d have to.
Roan ignored the elevators and found the door to the fire stairs, which was hidden absurdly well. He felt like running, and that’s exactly what he did, pelting up the stairs like he was running a marathon. He barely felt any of the exertion, but when he reached the second floor and started up the third, a bit of a Clash song just floated through his head for no reason at all: “London calling to the imitation zone/forget it, brothers, you can go it alone!” Now why had that occurred to him? It was either his subconscious attempting to be funny (or just entertaining), or a precursor to another aneurysm. (The last thing he genuinely remembered before feeling that deep, stabbing pain in his head was a These Arms Are Snakes lyric that just floated into his head for no reason. Either this was his brain’s fucked up way of trying to warn him bad things were a-brewin’ in his blood vessels, or just some random thing, a coincidence. At least it had good musical taste.)
He stopped dead as he smelled blood.
Now that he had stopped, he could hear harsh breathing too, echoing in the narrow metal stairwell. It was above him, but not far. “I’m on my way,” he announced. “Can you hear me?”
At first he was sure the guy (it was a guy; you could tell from the blood) was unconscious, but when he was within view of the fourth floor l
anding, the guy said, gasping and weak, “You shouldn’t go up. I don’t know where they are.”
The man was infected, Roan knew that from the blood too. Panther strain. He was in Human form though, splayed on the fourth floor landing, partially slumped against an exit door, bloody scratch marks on his face, arms, and torso, but most of the blood was coming from a neck wound that, while not spurting, was losing blood in copious amounts that couldn’t be healthy for anyone. A puddle had already formed around him, dyeing his jeans black. His T-shirt was previously black, but it gleamed wetly and clung to his torso like he was a model, except models usually weren’t drenched in blood.
He was an average-looking guy in his early twenties, with the only odd thing about him being his strawberry blond hair and hazel eyes, as red hair and hazel eyes was an unusual combination. When his eyes locked on his, Roan thought he saw recognition in them, which was confirmed when he said, “Oh, you’re him.”
Before asking what that was supposed to mean—and his inflectionless, tired voice gave no tells—Roan pulled out his radio, and said, “Got a guy bleeding out on the fourth floor landing of the emergency stairwell. The area’s clear to this point. Send in the paramedics.”
“Roger,” Gordo replied.
Roan tucked the radio into his waistband (which was getting crowded at this point, but fuck it), and then covered the throat wound with his hand, putting as much pressure on it as he dared. He should reach into the man’s neck and pinch off whatever vein was leaking out so much blood, but he wasn’t a medical professional and there was a good chance he’d pinch off the wrong damn thing. Also, he would probably cause this guy pain, and he’d undoubtedly been in enough pain. There was blood on the stairs from the fifth floor, suggesting he’d dragged himself to this point or fallen. “Do we know each other?” Roan asked, sure they didn’t.
“No,” the guy confirmed. “But I know you. You’re Roan McKichan.”
He mispronounced the last name, but since he was dying, Roan let it go. “It’s my day for being recognized. What’s your name?”
“Ben. Ben Sawyer.”
“Well, Ben, what happened? How are you the only member of the cat hit squad who didn’t change?”
All he had was his eyes now. His posture was limp, there seemed to be no strength in his body, and most of his face was obscured by blood. But his eyes, as tired as they were, still told him all he needed to know. He saw the denial, but then he saw the surrender, the decision to just tell him the truth. “We weren’t a hit squad.”
“So what were you? You had to know people might die.”
“Not if they weren’t idiots. We had nothing to lose, we’re all as good as dead anyways, and we figured it was time someone noticed what these greedy bastards were doing, letting our people die—”
“By killing some of them? Not smart.”
“No, we just wanted to bring attention to them.” He paused briefly. “You could.”
He ignored that. “What happened to you?”
“I dunno. I was supposed to change like everyone else, but somehow I didn’t. I mean, fuck, I’ve never had a cycle be so short. Why didn’t I change?”
“How long was it?”
“Three days,” he scoffed. “Three fucking days.”
That was the absolute least of a cycle. It didn’t happen a lot. It was rare, but it did occasionally occur. Obviously, it did to this poor bastard. “One of your friends attacked you?”
“I thought I could leave without getting noticed, but I shoulda stayed put. It was Brandon, I think, but I don’t blame him for what happened. Shit happens.”
Roan wondered where the EMTs were, but thought he heard noises below them. They probably were having trouble finding the door. Roan was kneeling beside Ben and felt blood soaking into the knees of his pants even as it ran down his hand. The funny thing was there was so much blood in a person; you really had no idea how much until you had one bleeding to death right in front of you.
Ben stared at him, and Roan could almost see him falling somewhere deep inside his eyes. He wanted to sleep, and Roan knew he couldn’t let him, had to keep him conscious. He could hear the EMTs pounding up the stairs, but they were taking much longer than Roan had. But to be fair, he wasn’t lugging equipment, and also he wasn’t quite Human. “You should be our leader,” Ben said.
Roan gave him a quizzical look. “Excuse me?”
“We need a leader. Most groups have them, but we don’t. And you’d be perfect.”
“I doubt it.”
“You would. Most normals are afraid of us because of what we could give ’em. They’re afraid of you ’cause of what you can do to them.” His gaze was steady and strong—he honestly believed what he was saying. But that could have been the blood loss. “You’re dangerous because you remind them they’re just prey.”
Finally the EMTs reached the landing, huffing slightly. “He’s infected,” Roan told them. Both of them, a far-too-handsome man and a woman built like a fireplug, nodded as they put their kits down. Roan waited until EMT Handsome was ready, and then quickly removed his hand from Ben’s neck wound, where just a bit more blood spilled out before Gorgeous George put his gloved paramedic hand over it. He had a thick gauze pad too, but it would probably last only a few seconds before it was soaked with blood and utterly useless.
Roan stood up, and Ben’s hazel eyes followed him even as the female paramedic shined a penlight into his eyes and asked him basic response questions. Roan felt bad for the kid, but there was nothing he could do for him now, and he still had friends upstairs. Which reminded him to ask, “How many?”
“Four,” Ben replied, still ignoring the EMTs.
Roan nodded and skirted them, heading for the fifth floor. “You’ve got blood on you,” Paramedic Sexy said. Bizarrely, he had a British accent, which he didn’t expect. But why not? Paramedics could be British. “It’ll draw the cats right to you.”
“Good.” He wanted them to come to him, to leave the Humans alone and respond to their alpha. It might be the only way to save them before the normals killed them all.
11
Troubled Son
Roan entered the fifth floor angry, and he wasn’t completely sure why. Well, maybe the helpless feeling of someone bleeding to death, of someone dying pointlessly for an honestly stupid cause. Insurance companies were bastards. They could only profit if people died, and people hated infecteds, so why would anyone else care if infecteds died? They wouldn’t. People hated insurance companies too, but the treatment of infecteds wouldn’t sway them one way or another. He wished it would.
On the floor, he could smell panic, fear, blood, and cat, tainting the otherwise cold and business-bland hallway that still had faint traces of coffee, toner, and ozone. He let out a challenging roar, channeling his anger into the scream, but it didn’t work—it made him angrier.
There was a responding roar down the hall, and he heard claws clicking on the floor, running for him. He ran for it, wondering if this was Brandon, if this was the cat that had accidentally killed his own friend. He couldn’t hate it if it was; it wasn’t his fault. But that was logic, and he was too angry to be logical. He ran toward the noise, still roaring, feeling the pain in his jaws, in his gums, tasting blood in his mouth and hearing bones crack in his cheeks. He thought briefly of dropping to all fours, of trying to summon the change so he could sink his teeth into its fur and rip the flesh off its bones, but he somehow managed to hold that back.
It was a lion charging down the hall toward him, and he roared another challenge at it, continuing to run toward it. Something made the animal hesitate, stop so suddenly its claws skidded on the shiny, slick floor, and Roan almost didn’t stop, but then he was dimly aware that if he didn’t, the lion would run and he’d have to chase the damn thing.
They exchanged growls and snarls, the lion a squat one with streaks of mud brown through its ruffled mane. Roan felt the muscles boiling in his arms, the tendons stretching, the bones dislocating and cracking in
his hands and feet. One side of the hall had offices and conference rooms with opaque glass inserts in them, and he was aware of Human-sized shadows in his peripheral vision, people quarantined in their offices trying to see what was happening. If he saw nothing but shapes through the glass, that was all they saw too.
The lion was confused, probably because he smelled like different kinds of blood, and Roan found himself distracted by his own internal fight. The last time he'd partially changed, it hadn’t hurt at all, but he hadn’t been fighting it then. (He hadn’t realized it’d been happening, but that was beside the point.) Fighting it was nearly as painful as simply transforming.
The lion sensed the hesitation in him and lunged, which was fine with him. He caught its muzzle in one hand, forcibly shutting its jaws, and while its claws tore into his arms and chest, he punched it straight between the eyes, hard enough that he heard something crack in his hand. Or maybe its head—maybe both. But he was in too much pain to feel any more pain; the circuits were overloaded and couldn’t accept any more signals.