Infected: Lesser Evils Read online

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed before, because of course he had, but this was, for some reason, the last straw.

  He loathed himself for the self-pity, for crying so hard it felt like he was being punched in the stomach from the inside out, but he couldn’t stop, and felt like he was going to collapse. Dylan held him, murmuring comforting things that could never be real.

  He was a monster, more now than ever, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  DYLAN was no stranger to breakdowns. He’d had one—well, more or less—and his brother Tom was, sadly, schizophrenic, a mental illness far beyond his control and beyond a one-time breakdown, but often exacerbated by his refusal to take his medication. But his experience with them was measured somehow, inevitable, not quiet but relatively bloodless, something you could see coming long before the explosion.

  This was horrible. Roan was cracking, and part of it was simply the current crisis, the tainted burn and the cats freaking out almost as much as people and the authorities were. But it was only part, and maybe that was the worst part of it. Eventually the use of burn would go down, the infected would catch on and stop. But would it happen before Roan cracked under the strain? He didn’t know.

  Dylan left Roan sleeping fitfully under the quilt he’d hastily pulled over him. Finally exhaustion and the sheer ton of drugs he must have taken had weighed him down, and Roan had fallen asleep between pained sobs. Dylan had to change his shirt, since it was soaked with tears and snot, but oddly enough he felt numb. What could he do? Nothing. Just sit back and watch as Roan crumbled from the strain. He was angry, but also defeated. There was nothing Dylan could do; nothing he could do would help. He felt impotent and useless. He couldn’t stop the world from hurting Roan any more than he could stop Roan from hurting himself. What was he doing here if he was such a nothing?

  Roan’s phone buzzed like an angry hornet, and he retrieved it from his coat pocket to let whoever was calling him know that Roan was fucking out for the day and wouldn’t be available for a while. But it wasn’t the cops or the media, so that was a sort of relief. Even though it was another chore, at least it gave him something to do beyond feeling superfluous.

  He grabbed his coat and the car keys and headed out, quietly shutting the door behind him. Kevin met him at the top of the stairs.

  “Look,” he began nervously. “I’m sorry. I really did forget.”

  “That’s okay.” It wasn’t—Eric was his friend, and yes, maybe Parker was set up and never intended him harm, but Eric was still dead, still another murder statistic, and there was never any way he was feeling good about that—but he was also too tired to argue the point. “Roan’s asleep right now, he’s exhausted, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t disturb him.”

  Kevin nodded almost spasmodically. “Sure, yeah. Umm, dinner’s done, if you wanna join us. Homemade cheese ravioli. Give me some credit for remembering you’re a vegetarian.”

  Dylan tried to smile, but it probably didn’t work. “Thanks. Maybe you could save some for me? Holden called, he needs someone to pick him up from the hospital.”

  “Holden? You mean Fox? Why’s he at the hospital?”

  “You don’t know? Some guys jumped him, beat the shit out of him.”

  “What? No! I thought he was a tough bastard.”

  Dylan could only shrug. “Even tough guys have a limit.” He was talking about Roan as well, and he thought Kevin, big bear of a vice cop that he was, got that.

  Kevin moved out of the way and headed down the stairs, but Kevin said hesitantly, “Umm, about my relationship with Parker—”

  Dylan turned, shaking his head emphatically. “It’s none of my business, Kevin, and I honestly don’t care one way or another. But the thing Roan hates more than anything is someone lying to him, so just be honest, and he won’t get on your case about it.”

  He might as well have taken a poke at him. Kevin flinched, backing up a step. “What? What are you implying?”

  “Nothing. You’ve known Roan longer than I have, so you know even better than I do his hunches have a tendency to pan out more than average. And he’s worried about you, not anything else. Keep that in mind.” He left Kevin to figure out what he was going to say to Roan, if anything at all. He knew better than to get between Roan and his friends.

  Speaking of which, he drove to the hospital to pick up Holden, numb to his fingertips, turning the radio up loud just to fill his head with noise. It was better than thinking right now.

  Holden was loitering outside the hospital, and he seemed surprised to see him. “Roan isn’t with you?” Dylan had told him, somewhat disingenuously, that he’d pass on the message to Roan. He didn’t add that he’d pass it on when he woke up, which could be sometime late tomorrow.

  “He’s asleep. He had a hard day.”

  Holden was still bruised, he still had all the hallmarks of a badly beaten person, with a purplish-red discolored eye, red lines of scars and scrapes giving a roughness to his face, a bit of a knot still visible near the hinge of his jaw. It was weird, but it made Holden look almost more dangerous, his eyes bright and sly beneath the bruises. “There was supposedly some infected attack somewhere. Roan was in that, wasn’t he?”

  “Who else do they turn to when there’re big cats running around?”

  He nodded, as if he should have known better. “Is he okay?”

  “Depends on your version of okay.” Dylan walked back to the car so he didn’t have to explain further.

  As it was, he didn’t have to. Holden got into the passenger seat, and waited until he shut the door before asking, “Hospital hospital or psychiatric hospital?”

  “Neither, for the moment. But I think I should probably notify Western State and get them to save him a bed.”

  He sighed sympathetically. “Should it be so hard to be a superhero? I thought it was all spandex and endorsement deals.”

  “Maybe that only applies to straight guys. And for the record, Roan seems to have some moral objection to spandex.”

  “I don’t blame him. Vinyl is sexier.”

  Dylan looked at him, wondering if he was serious, and wondering if it should bother him if he was, but he decided to let it go. Holden was a bizarre creature he would never pretend to understand, like reality show contestants or Glenn Beck, but not as dedicated to evil as either of those. Dylan simply started the car and made his way out of the hospital lot, double-checking Holden’s address, as he didn’t really know it.

  After an awkward pause, Holden asked, “How you holding up?”

  “I want to hit something. I’m no good to him, I might as well not be here. He’s in so much pain, and I can mouth platitudes all I want, but they do fuck all.”

  “Well, just—”

  “And please don’t say just being there for him is enough, because no, it isn’t.” It was starting to rain, a mist-like drizzle starting to spit tiny beads of moisture on the windshield, but not enough to trigger the wipers. Traffic was iffy, but right now he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much at the moment.

  No one ever had to tell Dylan life wasn’t fair. Being both mixed race and gay gave him a marvelous ringside seat on how fucking unfair life was. But sometimes it seemed like life was more unfair to certain people than others. He was unable to determine if it was more unfair to Roan, to him, or to both of them.

  Holden thought for a long moment, scratching the stitches on his scalp. “Then let’s do something.”

  “What?”

  “He’s told you of the leads he has on the whole tainted burn thing, right? Let’s follow them. Take some of the burden off him by looking at things for ourselves.”

  Here was Holden surprising him again. “We’re not detectives.”

  “Well, I’m an assistant investigator. And if there’s anything Roan’s taught me, it’s that being a detective isn’t really that hard, it just takes lots of patience. You have to find the pieces, and try to put them all together. We’re capable of finding pieces.”

/>   “Are we?”

  “Oh ye of little faith. Yes, I think so. Now where do we start? Being hospitalized, I’m sure I’m behind on the narrative.”

  When they reached a stoplight, Dylan looked over at him with a skeptical glare. “You want to start now?”

  “Absolutely. I hated being cooped up, I need some action. I need to stop feeling like a victim of something.”

  Which brought up a point that Dylan had wondered about. “You know, whoever did this to you, Roan got them.”

  Holden betrayed no surprise, which was pretty much a confirmation. “Why do you say that?”

  “’Cause he’d be obsessed with finding the guys who jumped you. He hasn’t been; he hasn’t mentioned it once. Meaning it’s because he got them already.”

  He made a “hmm” noise, and finally said, “Interesting. See, you have the makings of a detective and you never realized it.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  Holden gave him an innocent look that fit too well on his face to be genuine. “How would I know? I’ve been in the hospital all this time.”

  Dylan frowned at him, giving him the evil eye, but he knew even as he was doing it that it wouldn’t work. You couldn’t shame the shameless. “Did you learn how to lie so smoothly, or was it inborn?”

  Much like he suspected, Holden wasn’t offended. Again, shaming the shameless was damn near impossible. “Bit of both. My father was a preacher, after all, so you could argue nature versus nurture ’til the cows come home.” He paused briefly. “So where did Roan leave the investigation?”

  Should he tell him? This was insane. They weren’t investigators; they were a male prostitute and an artist. It sounded like the setup to a really horrible comedy or porn film. But the idea of doing something, anything, rather than worrying about Roan was seductively appealing. “There was a message on Roan’s phone,” he began reluctantly. “A guy from the Church. Apparently he was returning a call that Roan must have made, saying he might have what he needs, but he needs him to meet him first. He seemed to be implying some kind of drug deal without ever saying it.”

  “Are you sure that it isn’t Roan picking up some Vicodin?”

  He shot him a weary glance. “He has different sources for that. When we—he talked to that dealer that called himself Hardy, he said there was someone dealing burn out of the Church. I think Roan found the guy.”

  “The guy who returned the call.”

  He nodded. “It would seem.”

  “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s stop by my place so I can change into some clothes that are less wrinkled, and we’ll go.”

  “Are you serious? He’ll know we’re not Roan.”

  Holden just shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “He may, he may not. Just let me do the talking.”

  Oh, he intended to. Maybe he was nuts enough to try this, but he wasn’t crazy enough to think it would work.

  16

  Fame > Infamy

  HONESTLY, Holden felt sorry for Dylan.

  Not that he’d ever admit that, it would probably piss him off (well, as much as a dedicated Buddhist could be pissed off at anyone). But he seemed too peace loving to be in Roan’s violent life, too dedicated to harmony to be attached to the bucket of chaos and crazy that was Roan. And he meant that as a compliment—good crazy was hard to find. Although sometimes you still needed a vacation from it.

  And oh boy, did Dylan need a vacation. So did Roan, probably, but he couldn’t take a vacation from himself no matter how many pills he took, although that didn’t stop him from trying. Opposites did seem to attract sometimes, that was true, so that’s probably how Dylan and Roan had ended up together, Dylan being the peace Roan wanted to achieve, but it wouldn’t work. Roan was a romantic, despite how cynical he seemed (why else was he into serial monogamy?) and he would stick with this kid as long as he could, but he was going to burn him out. He wouldn’t mean to, he’d hate himself forever for hurting Dylan, but he would. It was impossible to stand on the sidelines of Roan’s car crash life and not get hit by flying debris. Dylan must have been something of a romantic himself, since he stayed with him, and must have known how bad Roan was for him. But Dylan struck him as the stubborn type; he wouldn’t give up so easily, even when he should. It was a fitting epitaph.

  Although Holden understood Roan’s angst on one level, on another he didn’t. Being Human was overrated; Humans were selfish, venal, and generally horrible to one another. His advice to Roan would simply be become the lion and stop worrying about it so much. Surround himself with loyalists who would make sure he didn’t end up in a zoo, and embrace the big cat lifestyle. There wasn’t much to miss about humanity, or at least not as far as Holden could tell. He was pretty sure Roan would agree with him there. But….

  It was probably the romantic thing again, holding him back. He still had to believe somewhere in his brain that Humans weren’t necessarily all that bad. Holden blamed Paris for that; if Paris hadn’t proved to be such a sexy firecracker, Roan wouldn’t be trying to hang on so desperately to a humanity that could only betray him.

  Holden was aware this was his own cynicism showing. Also probably some wish fulfillment on his part, as he would love to be able to just turn into a big cat and be done with people forever, except as snacks. It wasn’t that he didn’t know he had a dark side, because of course he did; he’d been a street kid, and he did lots of things that could be considered unsavory, and for fuck’s sake, he was a hooker. But working with Roan had taught him many unflattering things about himself, had cued him into things he supposed he could have guessed, but hadn’t really known. He could kill, for instance, and it wouldn’t bother him much. Oh sure, those guys deserved it, so why would it bother him? But just the idea of it wasn’t pleasant. He was every sin his father preached against (while his father went ahead and committed others). Maybe that’s why he was kind of proud of it too.

  He played good host, he offered Dylan a drink, but Dylan was content to be as stiff and fragile as a board doused in liquid nitrogen. So Holden left him there as he went into his bedroom to change. He wasn’t sure how to dress. Was he going to pretend to be Roan? Well, that would never work, for several reasons. The main one—the big one—was they didn’t look anything alike. They were both white guys, but that was pretty much where it ended; Roan was technically even paler than him, as he seemed to stay out of the sun as much as possible, and on top of that he was a redhead. Even their body shapes were incompatible—he had broader shoulders, he was healthy farm-boy stock, while Roan was built more for speed. Maybe that was part of the reason why his reflexes were so good. (That and the fact that he was superhuman. More Human than Human?)

  Still, Roan had a pretty simple wardrobe to grasp: weird T-shirt, jeans (never designer, never tight), and a funky coat. (Roan had no real fashion sense, except when it came to coats. He had great coats. It was like the one place where his true gayness came through, in his elegant, swoopy coats.) He thought he had a pretty nifty leather jacket, although his T-shirts probably weren’t as accidentally hip as Roan’s. Smutty, sure, but Roan rarely went for smutty. He sifted through his clean shirts, and finally found one with a giraffe on it (Why a giraffe? Why not?) and it seemed funky enough to suit his purposes. He wasn’t going to be Roan, he couldn’t be Roan, but he could be a sort of analogue. A generic Roan type, if you would.

  He went into the bathroom, mainly because he had to pee, but he found himself looking at himself in the mirror, which he had promised himself he wouldn’t do. But under the harsh fluorescents Holden got to see the hues spreading across his face, all the colors of the rainbow that a bruise or a contusion could mimic: purple, maroon, yellow, green, brown, even something akin to a low-saturation blue. He scowled seeing it, but not because it marred his pretty face. His face had never been pretty; he had always been told he wasn’t beautiful, but was interesting all the same, which he supposed was some sort of odd compliment—not ugly, not pretty, but not plain. Neither Dylan
with his dark-eyed, swarthy handsomeness, nor Roan with his strangely feline—damn it, it was—allure, but some sort of oddity out in his own orbit. Pluto to their Jupiter and Saturn, he supposed, something people argued over categorizing. No, he hated seeing it because it was like “Victim” was plastered all over his face, written on his forehead in blood and lipstick for all to see. Holden was not a victim, he was never a victim, no matter what was done to him, and it filled him with a sudden fury that made him long to start breaking things. But no, he had to collar it, stifle it, get it under control. Because if he lost control, didn’t they win?

  Besides, he knew that he had done them all worse by sending Roan after them. He wasn’t an attack dog—sorry, lion, which was a million times better—but something about animal rage and Human logic combined promised you a weapon that few could deal with. In fact, it made him wonder anew if any of those Internet conspiracy theories about the cat viruses were true. The most likely of all of them was some sort of genetic modification gone awry, but for what purpose? Gene therapy? Again, the most likely, but some people insisted the government (any government; didn’t really matter which one) was trying to find that new and improved soldier, like they did in every bad action film. Didn’t seem likely they’d look at the animal kingdom for that, certainly not the cat family (wouldn’t gorilla be better?) and yet, after seeing Roan in action, after hearing what he had done to Garver and his fucking cop butt monkeys, he wondered if maybe someone had figured out the master plan after all. It was just so insane it was hard to believe. But he had some proof, didn’t he? Roan was a one-man destruction squad. He didn’t want to be, he couldn’t always control it, but fuck if he didn’t bring that snuff house down. Holden hadn’t really needed to be there—all those men and all those guns still equaled a fight they couldn’t win and several messy deaths. The only thing Holden had to do was clean up the mess afterward.