Infected: Shift (32 page)

“If you’re upset.”

“Yeah. Sometimes fellow cats can bring it close to the surface too.”

“Why?”

“Rivals. I’m the King Cat, and if they don’t acknowledge it, I make them. You saw that for yourself.”

Dylan gave him a quick glance out of the corner of his eye before gazing back down at the carpet, hands held together between his knees. “I had this idea for a painting. You leading an army of cats. Could you do that?”

“Lead a bunch of cats? I dunno. I’ve never tried.”

“But they obey you, don’t they? What’s stopping you from assembling your own pride of altered infecteds?”

He would have been pissed off by this line of questioning normally, but he knew Dyl was still trying to understand this. Dylan didn’t mean anything nasty by it. “In theory? Absolutely nothing. But altered infecteds don’t understand language in that form, so I have no idea how I’d give them an order.”

“But you managed with the panther. You told it to submit and it did.”

“That was more of a ’tude thing. The roaring helps.”

Dylan sat back with a sigh, sinking into the sofa. “That’s a hell of a roar you got there. I wouldn’t have believed a human could make that sound.”

“I’m not Human.”

“Stop that shit. Of course you are. You’re just human plus a little extra.” He paused briefly. “The change hurts, I get that, but you change a lot. I know you’re not into S&M, so why do it if it hurts so much? There has to be something in it for you.”

Oh, he could be so good at spotting the little details sometimes. “Yeah. Maybe it’s the endorphins responding to all the pain, but along with the change comes a… a rush. I feel so fucking powerful when the change comes. The pain is kind of irrelevant. I feel like I could fight the world and win.”

Dylan just nodded, like it was something he suspected. “You had that look in your eye.”

“My cat eyes, you mean?”

“They’re just your eyes, Roan. You can see it’s you. The pupils change shape, but that’s all.”

Roan stared at him in disbelief. “Really?”

He nodded. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I don’t look in a mirror when I change.” He considered that and wondered why it bothered him. Maybe it had been mentioned before, but he always thought they were joking. “Fuck.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Dylan said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

“I don’t want to die. But I can’t just sit down and shut up.”

“Oh, I know. If you shut up, I’d know you’d been replaced by a pod person.” He scowled at Dylan for that, but he got an affectionate, sad smile in return. “You hafta be patient with me. I never signed up to be the boyfriend of a superhuman or a shapeshifter, whichever you prefer.”

“I’m not a proper shapeshifter, ’cause I can only do the one shape.”

“Now you’re nitpicking. You can call yourself whatever you want. Except freak.”

“But I am a freak.”

“No, you’re not. Stop that.”

“But—”

“No,” Dylan warned, giving him a hard-edged look. But it only lasted a second. “Don’t try me,
pendejo
. Don’t even think about it.”

Roan held up his hands in surrender. “I quit.”

“I wish you’d quit. But you won’t.” Again he sighed, impatiently this time, but his eyes were kind when he looked at him. Roan wanted to touch him, but wasn’t sure he had the right. “I don’t know if I can live with this. But I miss you, and I can’t stand the idea that something will happen to you and I won’t be there. So….”

He trailed off, but Roan felt confident enough to put a hand on his shoulder. Dylan didn’t stiffen up or object. “I missed you too. I’m an idiot.”

“No. You’re smart when it comes to other people. You’re just an idiot with yourself.”

Wow—that was it. Him in a nutshell. “But that’s why you love me, right?” he joked, giving him an encouraging smile.

Dylan rolled his eyes. “No, that’s why I want to punch you sometimes. You just lucked out that I’m a Buddhist pacifist.”

They sat in silence for a moment, but it was a comfortable silence. Roan heard a clock ticking and wondered where the hell he had a ticking clock. His office? “You coming back?”

Dylan stared him straight in the eyes so Roan had no chance of trying to weasel out of a genuine answer. “Let me into your world. Stop keeping me out.”

Did he know what a tall order that was? He must have, as he expected him to balk. But Roan didn’t. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“You’d better. My next snit, I’m throwing your stuff on the lawn.”

“Try it. I wanna see you pick up my desk.”

Dylan shook his head and looked away, smiling. “Such a smartass.”

“But a smartass with a rockin’ bod,” he teased and turned Dylan’s face to kiss him. Dylan slipped his arms around him, and relaxed into his kiss like he’d been waiting for it all day. Roan knew he had been.

No matter what happened tomorrow, at least he hadn’t totally screwed things up with Dylan.

Yet.

Roan
wondered why anyone bothered with razor wire.

It was so easy to defeat. If you had a thick enough coat (leather preferred), you just threw it over the stuff and could climb over it quite easily. It might rip the shit out of your jacket, but you were fine if you were careful. That’s what Roan did, even though he had other options. He could have used bolt cutters to cut the chain around the rusty gate, or even just attempted a jump over the chain-link fence, as he was hardly a normal human. But that would have been a bit too
Six Million Dollar Man
for him, and he honestly didn’t know if he could jump that high.

The rest might have ruined any sense of surprise. He didn’t kid himself—there were probably CCTV cameras out here, hidden somewhere in the fourth of a mile of desert scrub up to the house, and the element of surprise was one he couldn’t count on for long—but he wanted to keep it for as long as humanly (or inhumanly) possible. He didn’t know how many people were there (although judging from all the scents he was picking up, many), and he didn’t know how well armed they were, but he knew these weren’t men who cared much for laws. They had killed before, and what was one more body?

But if he could get in close before they knew he was there, if he could get to the main house, he had a better-than-average shot of taking them down. In close quarters, he had all the advantage.

It was a time of day he usually tried to avoid—the cusp of morning, the sky gently cycling through many shades of indigo and blue as the sun started lighting the edge of the horizon. It was not proper morning, just frighteningly early, the chill bite in the air enough to raise goose bumps on his arms. In a handful of hours, it would be so hot out here it would be a nightmare (especially to one with as much Scottish blood and genetic paleness as him), but right now Roan was shivering as he walked along the ocher sand, scanning creosote bushes and tenacious Scotch broom for any hiding crepuscular snakes or any signs of cameras or electrical gear. Snakes had no smell—not really, not unless they were poisonous—but electrical equipment often had an ozone scent. He saw faint tire tracks, guessed they were from a jeeplike vehicle, and he was still studying them when he caught the scent of exhaust on the wind and heard the faint hum of a motor.

There wasn’t a lot of cover out here—this location was picked specifically for that reason, for the fact that if anyone came for them, they’d have a good half-mile head start—but there was enough scrub brush clumping together and enough lingering darkness that he figured he had some temporary cover as long as he didn’t move. He was wearing all black, his ninja gear as Paris would have called it, but here it had a very specific purpose. In full daylight, he’d stand out in a desert, but right now, in the ass crack of dawn, he was just another shadow. He crouched down behind the sour-smelling scrub in a hybrid kneeling/runner’s crouch, one leather-gloved hand flat against the sand. He would probably have surprise on his side here, but he would have to move fast—he didn’t want to risk gunshots until he absolutely had to. His muscles were thrumming like wires, ready to go, as he’d been priming his own adrenaline since before he reached the fence. His rage was a cold, constant variety, murderous and yet strangely clinical, and sometimes that actually made it harder to keep the cat out. It worked best in sudden, emotionally homicidal bursts, but who was the boss here? If it wanted to keep surviving, it would work with him.

The jeep pulled up about twenty feet away from the scrub—the open-topped kind with no side windows, Army surplus jeep, the kind that gave you better views and more angles at which to shoot at people out of your vehicle. The man who got out was pudgy but had a kind of utilitarian heft, part muscle and part fat. He was wearing a T-shirt that advertised a local titty bar and worn jeans that hung in a way that suggested he had french fry legs holding up his potato-shaped body. In spite of his leather jacket, he was also visibly wearing a gun, what looked like a .45 S&W in a worn belt holster done up in cowboy drag, and a hunting knife in a camo holder on the opposite hip. He was smoking a cigarette, holding a battered old red plaid thermos, which he poured out onto the sand—smelled like coffee, and since it didn’t steam, he assumed it was cold and disgusting. What Roan initially took for a cell phone on his belt appeared to be a walkie-talkie on second glance.

He had a nothing face, the kind you forgot while you were talking to him, soft and doughy, eyes as empty and glassy as potholes filled with rain, a ratty beard and mustache combo that looked from a distance like he painted his face with mud. He looked like he should have been wearing a cowboy hat, if only to cover up the bald spot in the direct center top of his scalp. He smelled like stale smoke, body odor, cordite, and arrogance.

The man glanced at the fence line, a casual look, routine, but he froze when he saw the coat over the top of the razor wire. He was about fifty yards away from the fence, and it could have been a person strung up there from this distance, at least if you didn’t look too hard. He squinted at it, hand reaching blindly for his walkie-talkie, and that’s when Roan decided to make his move. He felt the power gathering in his legs, coiling like springs, before he charged out of the brush, sprinting toward him as straight as an arrow.

It was all a blur really, although he saw it in slow motion, as he did often when the lion came out to play. The guy turned instantly toward him, reaching for his gun instead of his walkie-talkie, but he didn’t make it. Roan crashed into him like a bullet train, shoulder to the sternum, and the man didn’t fall back so much as get thrown back hard into his jeep, making it rock, his air leaving him in a pained grunt.

He had enough presence of mind to slam a meaty fist into Roan’s back, which hit near the small of his back and hurt like fuck, sending an electric thrill of pain down his spine, but that was his first stupid mistake: pain made the lion come out stronger, faster, harder to control. He snarled as the man gasped, “Faggot freak—” confirming he recognized him. Roan suspected they knew his face, that the guy in charge of this operation had made sure everyone knew it.