Infected: Shift (24 page)

Grey was there, working a heavy bag, wearing a Falcons shirt and shorts with a similar evil bird head logo. There were about half a dozen people scattered around the boxing area, and Grey was the only one who actually looked like a boxer. (He wasn’t, but he was close enough. He was a boxer on skates.) Grey grinned at him and asked, “How good of a boxer are you?”

He shrugged. “Decent. I have my own heavy bag at home.”

“Whoa. Hardcore. Wanna open it up, go mixed martial, or stay traditional?” Something glittered in his eyes, mischievous and ever so slightly dangerous, and Roan couldn’t see saying no to a challenge, even if he knew that it was stupid.

“If you’re up to it, let’s go mixed.” Ah, even gay men could fall into the macho man trap. Testosterone was poison.

Grey scoffed. “Yeah, I’m up to it. But I warn ya, I took judo as a kid.”

“I warn you, I turn into a lion when I get cornered.”

Grey laughed, as if he was joking. He wasn’t, of course, but if Grey didn’t know that by now, he’d learn.

Roan went off and changed into his shorts, jock, and tank top, finding gloves, headgear, and the special padded boots the kickboxers wore. He had his own mouth guard from when he used to spar in the gym, before he got his own heavy bag. He felt like a bit of a dick walking out to the ring, but he was no more or less a dick than anyone else in the place, and Grey was already waiting in the ring, dressed in a similar manner, and no one would ever call him a dick for fear of getting beaten to a fine paste.

Once he ducked under the rope and got in the ring, Grey asked, “You a righty or a lefty?”

“I’m right-handed, but I have a nasty left hook. What about you?”

“I’m a righty too, but I can shoot from either side. Call me ambiguous.”

Roan pondered that a moment. “Do you mean ambidextrous?”

He considered that a moment. “Maybe. Probably. I’m not great with big words. I’m not paid to be.”

Fair enough. They both popped in their mouth guards (Grey had a red one, and Roan was roughly sure that that was the one he wore on the ice), and they met in the center of the ring, where they bumped boxing gloves together. Since Grey was the client, Roan let him take the first punch, a huge roundhouse that smashed into the left side of his safety helmet and still made him stumble. It was probably a quarter of the power Grey put behind his hits, but damn, it was a concussion machine.

Grey worked a corner of the mouth guard out with only his teeth and tongue (having to wear one all the time on the ice made him an expert at this), and he asked, “Too hard?”

Roan smirked, recovering, and shook his head. If Grey wanted to play rough, he was more than happy to play along. He approached Grey warily, stepping in toward him on his right, and Grey threw a right, which he blocked with his arm, and nailed him in the stomach with a right of his own. Grey doubled over and backed away, and he said something muffled by his mouth guard, but Roan worked out what it was: “Sneaky.”

They both exchanged a couple of blocks and hits, testing each other out, seeing how hard the other was willing to hit. Pretty hard, but they both had no problem taking it. Roan could feel his adrenaline flowing, and was having to tamp down the urge to growl.

Grey was bigger and had more of a reach, as well as arms that could double for steel cables, but off the ice he was reasonably slow, and he had a tendency to telegraph his moves, possibly because finesse in hockey fighting was gilding the lily: all you needed to do was punch, hard, and if you had some wrestling skills, that could only help. There was not a lot of punch blocking in a hockey fight, usually because the guys were hanging on to each other’s jerseys so they didn’t get away or fall down.

Finally Grey decided to throw a kick, see what happened, but Roan saw it coming when he shifted his stance, and blocked his kick with his arm. Grey backed off with a wolfish grin, and Roan spun into his own kick, aiming for his face. Grey saw this coming and grabbed his foot, so Roan—by reflex alone, really his only excuse for it—launched off his remaining foot and turned in midair, slamming the foot right in Grey’s face, making him drop him and reel back in surprise and impact. Roan hit the mat on all fours and quickly jumped back up to his feet, fists out, ready to go.

Grey was slumped against the ropes, holding the side of his jaw and apparently laughing. Roan hadn’t realized it until then, but just about everyone else in the boxing area had come to watch them, gathered around a few feet away from the ropes. “Holy shit, how’d you do that?” A good-looking, shaven-headed black guy in gray sweatpants asked. “You a martial arts guy or something?”

In retrospect, Roan realized he probably should have dislocated a leg or a hip with a move like that, and how the hell did he turn in midair in that short a space to land on his hands and knees? Well, cats always landed on their feet, right? Ha. He shook off a glove and pulled out his mouth guard. “Grey, you okay?”

Grey was still laughing, but he worked his mouth guard out. “Yeah, I just didn’t expect that. So you did have some kickboxing training, huh?”

No, no he hadn’t. He had no actual explanation for what had just happened. Watching too many Jet Li films? Should he be worried? “Little bit,” he lied, just deciding it was easier.

Grey shook his head—shook it off—and stood up. “Wow, rattled my cage. That hasn’t been done since… fifth grade, I think. You’re stronger than you look.”

“I get that a lot.” He decided to back off, just let things calm down. He was doing, unconsciously, what Murphy just accused him of doing: showing off.

But after getting almost taken down, Grey had some pride on the line. He answered back with a flurry of punches, half of which Roan blocked, and half of which hit the target. He was mainly going for body shots, and still holding back, but the landed shots would probably leave bruises. But Roan landed some shots of his own that he knew would leave bruises as well, and would probably piss off Grey’s coach.

There was an occasional comment from the crowd, but both he and Grey ignored it. This was a sparring match that had become oddly intense and serious. He winged Grey with an uppercut—he just caught the very edge of his chin, lifting it, letting him know that he could have punched his head off his shoulders if he was serious, and as Grey stumbled back, slightly off balance, the crowd “oohed.”

“You tryin’ out for the UFC, dog?” someone asked. Roan wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or Grey.

Grey faked a left that Roan committed to, and surprised him with a right to the jaw that made Roan stumble to keep his balance. The crowd “oohed” again, and Roan turned into a low kick that hit Grey on the side of the knee and got enough of the back to make Grey’s leg buckle, dropping Grey involuntarily to his knees. Roan then tapped him on the top of his padded headgear, letting him know he could have done something worse, and Grey started chuckling again. Roan had finally figured out that Grey was so startled when someone got the drop on him, he laughed rather than got mad. If it was a game, he’d get mad, but this was basically practice. So he laughed.

Roan realized suddenly he was growling and stopped. Hopefully it was noisy enough that no one else noticed.

Roan offered him a hand up, and Grey took it. “Man, you got moves. If there’s ever a bench-clearing brawl, you have my permission to jump on the ice and help.”

“I’m an honorary Hanson brother?”

“Hell yeah.”

They were both sweaty and a bit short of breath—and achy—so they decided they’d sparred enough for the day. Hell, had it really been twenty minutes? It seemed like five. He could have kept going for the rest of the hour.

The crowd gave them a smattering of applause for being entertaining, and Roan flashed them a middle finger after he got a glove off, but that just made them laugh. He had the approval of the gym’s boxing straight guys. Not that he needed it; he was confident he could kick all their asses without much trouble, and wasn’t that a nice thought?

In the locker room, as they were changing out of their gear, Grey said, “I’ve never lost a fight, like, ever. I gotta spar with you until I can beat ya. It feels like a challenge.”

“Yeah, that was fun. I usually just work the heavy bag at home.”

“Ever punch it off its chain?”

Roan paused taking off his tank top. His back was to Grey—he was facing his locker—and he was suddenly glad. “Once, maybe.” Actually, four times, but who was counting? “Why?”

“Lucky guess. You punch like a wrecking ball. You really gotta teach me your stuff, man. It’s awesome.”

What could he teach him? How to get infected and make your inner beast work for you? He didn’t even know how to do that, it was just something that happened to him. He was the superfreak, after all.

He was still trying to figure out how he’d get out of that when he heard a weird noise. It took a moment to figure out it was his cell, humming away in his jacket inside the locker, vibrating against the metal wall. It was Murphy, and he didn’t want to answer it, but he knew he’d better. “Yeah, Dropkick, calling to lecture me some more?”

She sighed heavily. “Oh, you bastard, you wish. Michael Brand is dead.”

Yeah, she was right: he did wish she had called to lecture him.

Roan
listened as Dropkick mostly berated him, but kind of told him a bit about Michael Brand’s death. Apparently it looked like a suicide, but those were the operative words: looked like. She didn’t trust it, which was why the investigation was continuing.

After the call, Roan lay on the bench and looked up at the ceiling, wondering how best to ask what he wanted to ask and what he would do about it. Luckily, Grey had gone off to take a quick shower, so he had a couple minutes to think.

As soon as the water stopped, Roan asked, “What happened after I left this morning?”

“Huh?”

“Did you go out or something?”

“No man, I went back to bed. I probably would have slept all day except the neighbor started his leaf blower. Then I figured I had some energy to burn and decided to come here, which is when I called you. That’s about it. Why?”

“I suppose Scott is your alibi.” The ever-loyal team captain, looking out for his men. Roan could count on him to say Grey was home sleeping, whether he was or not.

“Yeah. Why?”

He stopped staring at the ceiling and sat up with a sigh. It was incredibly hard to judge veracity by smell in a gym. The smell of sweat was far too prevalent, and the fact that Grey had just had a quick shower only added another layer of complications. He was going to have to go on other things. He glanced at Grey, who was at his locker, getting dressed. He flashed Roan his hard ass without any kind of humility—again, long-time athlete, locker room nudity was nothing to him—and while Roan noted clinically you could probably bounce a quarter off the thing and it was nice, he still felt no attraction to Grey. Maybe his mind just wasn’t in that space right now. He felt an invisible cloak of doom settling on his shoulders. “Michael Brand’s dead.”

Grey finished stepping into his underwear—sporty black boxer briefs—and looked back at him, not surprised but still a little confused. “Oh, yeah? What happened?”