Infected: Freefall (6 page)

Roan couldn’t believe he was hearing this. He couldn’t actually decide how he felt about any of this. Enraged? Disbelieving? Maybe a little bit scared? All of the above? His heart was pounding, blood roaring in his ears, and he settled on anger, because it was easiest. Anger was always easiest, his default setting. “What the fuck do you have under the sheet? A psychology dissertation?”

Roan must have spit out the words pretty hard, because Dylan seemed to flinch slightly, glancing toward the threadbare carpet. Were there tears in his eyes? If so, he quickly blinked them away, and Roan wasn’t sure he’d seen them. “I just want you to know that I love you. All of you. I wish you could accept yourself as easily.” He reached behind himself blindly and pulled off the sheet, letting it fall to the floor.

What Roan saw was a portrait of himself from the shoulders up, larger than life in order to fill most of the canvas, which had a black background to highlight the face. He was just staring straight ahead, and Dylan had done an unbelievable job of capturing his face, especially since he hadn’t sat for the portrait. He’d even painted in the scar. Roan could have been looking in a mirror… well, one half of a mirror. Only the right side of his face was Human. There was a subtle blurring and shifting, and the left half of his face became that of a lion with mostly tawny fur, but its mane was shot through with fur the exact color of his hair. And not only that, but the Human half of the face had a lion’s eye, and the lion half of the face had a Human’s eye. It was so subtle that he almost didn’t realize it at first.

The morphing was almost computer perfect, really—he looked like the lion; the lion looked like him. It was almost impossible to separate the two… which was undoubtedly the point. But as the shock rippled through him and started to wear off, he became aware of the fact that there was no way Dylan could have painted that mane on speculation. He felt a cold chill that seemed to start in the center of his spine and spread throughout his body, diffusing like a drop of blood in water. “You’ve seen me transformed,” he said, and gave Dylan a sharp look. “I told you never to go into the basement when it’s my time of the month.”

“I’ve never—I stayed on the stairs. I never went down to—”

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Roan exploded, aware his anger was way out of proportion to what was essentially water under the bridge. But he didn’t care. His heart was racing, and he was vaguely aware that the painting, for whatever reason, scared the shit out of him. “The cage door has been broken before, and so has the basement door! Do you think I want to come to and find that I killed you?”

Dylan was shaking his head, eyes wide with surprise. He had expected a possibly negative reaction, but probably not this. “Roan, I was very careful. I wasn’t there long, I stayed on the top half of the steps—”

“I don’t give a shit! That was fucking dangerous, Dylan! I don’t want your blood on my hands.”

Dylan took a deep, calming breath, and his expression took on that Zen-like look that it always did before he shared wisdom that was far beyond his years. “Roan, this isn’t what you’re really angry about. Let’s—” Dylan put a hand on his shoulder.

That was a huge mistake. Roan jerked his arm away violently and backed away from him. “Don’t touch me unless you want to pull back a bloody stump.”

“Okay. I understand that—”

“You don’t understand shit! You don’t know me at all.”

“You’re right,” he agreed reasonably. Dylan didn’t know it, or at least wasn’t consciously aware of it, but he had his own version of the cop voice. “I don’t know you, not really. None of us can completely know another person. We can’t inhabit their skin, see from behind their eyes. We can only guess, project, do the best we can. I love you, Roan, and I want to be a part of your life if you’d let me. But you’re in so much pain—”

“Fuck you! I don’t need this bullshit,” he snapped, turning to go, stalking toward the door. “Do whatever you fucking want with your painting—it’s your painting. But don’t expect me to be around to see it.”

“Roan, please don’t go away angry.”

“Too late,” he said, opening the door and storming out like a big old drama queen. He was absolutely furious with himself, with Dylan, and he wasn’t sure why. The painting upset him, but why? He wanted to rip it off the easel and put his fist through it, then tear the remains into confetti. And he wasn’t sure why. The hell of it was he was absolutely enraged, and he didn’t know why.

Was it Dylan’s know-it-all attitude? His sense of unearned wisdom? His implication that he didn’t fight the lion but fought himself? How would he fucking know? The stupid bastard wasn’t even infected, didn’t live with this goddamn thing hijacking his DNA and turning his body inside out for the sheer fucking fun of it, making him a freak who actually had to worry about ripping out his stupid boyfriend’s fucking throat when the virus took over, or worry about ripping a robber’s head off his shoulders like a bottle cap even when the virus was dormant. He was starting to become something else, and Dylan had no fucking right to imply it was just him, that it was all his hang-ups or his “shadow” or whatever the fuck swamping him, and that he just thought of it as the lion because it made it easier to excuse, easier to blame, freeing himself from any responsibility.

It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Nothing was that simple. Nothing.

Except this was exactly what was necessary, wasn’t it? It was time to break away from Dylan, let him go. If he was smart, he’d call him to meet for coffee tonight, somewhere public and neutral, and tell him he couldn’t be in this relationship. Roan stood on the sidewalk outside The Elysian and wondered if Connor had ever thought that, that Roan should break away for his own good, just grab his shit and run for the hills. Could you be self-destructive and not be aware of it on some level, even if only for a single fleeting moment?

This was bullshit. He wasn’t Connor, he didn’t have a fucking death wish, and he wasn’t his own worst enemy, or whatever it was Dylan was implying. Being a Buddhist didn’t make him the fucking Buddha; he couldn’t see into Roan’s mind, and he had no enlightenment to offer him.

Roan headed for his car, only wanting to crank up These Arms Are Snakes, bury himself in the sonic wash of their chaos, and pop a couple of codeine, if only to take the edge off his anger. He really needed to go home and work the heavy bag, although that wasn’t what he really wanted to do; he wanted to get into a fight, a big one, burn some of this adrenaline off. But for the life of him, he had no idea why he was so mad.

He noticed there was a buzzing against his side and realized it was his cell phone, set on vibrate, going off in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and answered with a sharp, “What?”

“Whoa, who pissed on your Wheaties?” Murphy replied.

He sighed through his nose and rubbed his eyes. “What is it, Dropkick?”

“Are you actually being pissed at me? Really? Considering you stood me up?”

He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to meet her at the office and give her copies of the photos he took last night, trailing Dallas Faraday. “Oh shit, is it three-thirty already?” Even as he asked, he looked at his watch and indeed confirmed it was a quarter to four. “God, I’m sorry, Murph. I got… caught up in something.”

“It sounds like you’re gonna bust a nut. What the hell’s going on with you? Those church assholes still threatening you?”

“Oh, yeah, but they’re gnats. Who gives a fuck about them? Look, I’m not far from the office. You still there?”

“Sitting in the parking lot, feeling like an ass,” she confirmed.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, heading down the sidewalk and reaching into his pocket for his keys. “I’m really sorry, Murph. Today’s been kinda shitty.”

As if to confirm that, a young man suddenly veered into his path on the sidewalk. Roan stopped short of a collision, but he knew instantly something was wrong. For one thing, he was infected and hadn’t showered in maybe a day, so the scent of his strain—cougar—was strong on him. But not strong enough to conceal the scent of gun oil.

He had a hand in his coat pocket and the flat, dead-eyed look of a suicide bomber. Roan instantly knew who he was and why he was there even before he said, “We warned you.”

Roan grabbed for the man’s weapon as the concealed gun went off.

5

Bad Sects

R
OAN
had grabbed the gun barrel hidden in the man’s windbreaker pocket just as the guy pulled the trigger, but the odd thing was he didn’t realize it. It was an unconscious reflex, one that had reacted to the danger faster than he ever could have consciously.

Roan had shoved the barrel aside as the gun went off, and he felt a deep pain in his hand—like a wasp sting, hot and sharp—while he heard the sound of glass breaking somehow over the ringing in his ears, as well as the sound of someone’s startled yelp on the sidewalk behind him.

He was within kissing distance of this guy now, and noted he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, his short black hair greasy, as if he hadn’t washed it in a week, his face cratered and pockmarked with old acne scars and angry red bursts of more recent acne still blooming on his cheeks. His eyes were an uncomplicated blue and as empty as a bar after three in the morning. He was quite plain, and even with some photoshopping, he’d never be a handsome man. Or a sane one.

The man pulled the trigger again, but by this time Roan had the gun aimed away, and he was vaguely aware of a dull metallic noise as the bullet slammed into a parked car by the curb. Roan had dropped his phone, dimly aware that Murphy was still talking, and drove a fist into the kid’s stomach, so hard he doubled over and all the air seemed to leave him in a rush. He grabbed the kid’s greasy head and drove a knee hard into his face. Roan heard something crack and then felt warm blood gush down his leg.

He threw the kid on the sidewalk and ripped his hand out of his pocket, pulling out the gun as well. The kid started to move, but Roan kicked him in the stomach, making him gag. “Don’t even think about moving, motherfucker, or I’ll stomp you into a fucking stain.” Roan retrieved his phone, which somehow hadn’t shattered and was still working, and as he brought it up to his ear, Murphy was still talking. “—ere? Roan?”

“I’m here.”

“Did I just hear gunshots?”

“Yeah. One of the cat cultists just tried to kill me.”

“What?”

“Traitor!” the kid screamed hoarsely from the sidewalk. He was still curled up in fetal position, looking up at him with accusing eyes, but his eyes were fixed on his piece-of-shit Saturday night special, which Roan was now holding on him. “You will die in agony just like your faggot boyf—” That was as far as he got before Roan kicked him in the face. He didn’t know if it knocked him unconscious or just stunned him, but he shut the fuck up.

“Holy shit, I’m calling it in,” Murphy said. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

He reeled off the address and only then noticed that his right hand—the one holding the Saturday night special—was bleeding like a stuck pig, splattering his blood all over the sidewalk. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized it was numb, but he could move all his fingers and still had a hold of the gun, so he must have been kind of okay. “He needs an ambulance more than me, but I think he nicked my hand.”

“Nicked it? As in with a bullet?”

“Yeah.”

“Roan, oh my god, were those gunshots?” Dylan asked, exploding out of the apartment building. He was still barefoot but had shrugged on a gray sweatshirt. He just stared at the tableau in front of him for a moment—the guy curled up on the sidewalk in a small puddle of blood, the blood gushing from Roan’s hand and the gun in it—and seemed to understand that yes, he had indeed heard gunshots. “Fuck. Were you shot? Is he shot?”

“No one’s shot,” he assured him. “Except a car. Which doesn’t count.”

A slender, bald black woman wearing worn jeans and a paint-splattered T-shirt advertising a “Dykes With Bikes” rally came out of the apartment building and asked, “Dylan, what the hell was that noise?”

Dylan jerked his head toward him, and Roan smiled at her. “Hi. Sorry, this guy just tried to kill me.”

She stared at him with wide brown eyes. “Are you shitting me?” She glanced at Dylan, and he shook his head no, he wasn’t shitting anyone. Dylan then said, “De’Andra, this is my boyfriend, Roan. Roan, De’Andra.”

Roan nodded to her, keeping his phony smile pasted on. “Nice to meet you. I’m not usually beating down a punk-ass bitch.”

His would-be assassin spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth and ground out in a raspy voice, “Traitor. Fucking race traitor.”

“Race traitor?” De’Andra repeated.

“We’re both infected,” Roan explained. “Only he’s a religious nut bag.”

They could all hear police sirens approaching, and presumably an ambulance as well. “This isn’t over,” the kid gurgled, staring up at him balefully with one eye. The other was facing the sidewalk.

“You’re right, it’s not,” Roan agreed.

“You’re gonna die, you arrogant fuckhead—”

“Shut the fuck up,
pendejo
!” Dylan exclaimed angrily, walking over and kicking him in the back. Of course he was still barefoot, so it didn’t have a great deal of impact, but it was more symbolic than anything else. They exchanged a glance over the kid’s body, Dylan’s eyes sad, apologetic, asking for forgiveness. Roan felt bad, not sure why he was angry at him. Oh yeah, that painting. Why did it piss him off so much again? Damn, he still didn’t have a hold of it. Rather than give Dylan much of anything, he crouched down and asked the kid, “Who do you work for? Heather or David?” Those were the two still fighting for the leadership of the Church of the Divine Transformation: Heather Dow, Eli’s last girlfriend, and David Harvey, a former assistant of Eli’s.

The kid spit blood at him. It mostly missed. “Go fuck yourself.”

Finally a police car screamed up to the curb, just behind the car that had got shot (the bullet had taken out the passenger-side window), and a couple of cops got out. One of them, a young guy whose brush-cut hair was almost totally hidden beneath his cop cap, pulled out his gun and shouted, “Drop the weapon!”