Infected: Shift Page 4

  “Doctor Rosenberg put him in a coma ahead of his transformation. She’s fairly certain it’ll keep him alive.”

  “Oh.” There was a phrase you didn’t hear every day. How were you supposed to react to that? “It went okay?”

  “Fine. When I was finally kicked out, he was sleeping… well, comatose. But his vitals were good, and there were no problems. He takes to drugs like a duck to water.”

  Holden smirked at this, aware there was a bit of hollow anger in that last statement. “Sadly, yes. How are you doing?”

  Dylan returned, curling up on the sofa across from him, legs tucked under him as he cradled the mug in his lap. It wasn’t straight green tea; there was a fruity scent to it, citrus and berry. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. “Honestly? I’m fucking pissed off.”

  Now that he hadn’t expected. Dylan was such a mild guy that, in spite of being as gorgeous as he was, he was easily forgettable. In Holden’s mind, he just sort of blurred into the wallpaper. While his calm peacefulness was surely beneficial to Roan, who probably needed all the peace he could get, Dylan’s somewhat introverted nature left him an afterthought to many of Roan’s friends. He was the polar opposite of the bright explosion that was Paris. That was probably deliberate. “About what?”

  “About Roan and his attitude. He’s acting like he wants to die.”

  “He was put into the coma, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but only because Doctor Rosenberg didn’t give him a choice. He’s been acting like he wants to die since he found out about the aneurysm. He denies it, but… it’s just been freaky. It’s so irritating. I can’t even get properly mad at him, because I honestly believe he doesn’t know it. He’s living in denial or a Vicodin haze. One of the two.”

  See, this was why Holden was so glad he didn’t do relationships. These little wars, these little deaths… was a regular fuck buddy and shared rent worth it? Didn’t seem like it. Give him solitude, a cold bottle of gin, a decent piece of Internet porn, and he was good. “Is this because he went after the neo-Nazis?”

  “No, but that was one of the more flashy bits.”

  “Tell me about it. And people don’t know he’s gay? My God, he was wearing a gun. Just pull it and tell ’em to freeze, don’t jump on ’em like a big flaming drama queen. Jesus.”

  Dylan snickered at that, enjoying the joke. But his good humor faded fast, and he ended up looking kind of sad. “He’s never been a quitter. He’s not a man who quits easily or quietly. So why has he consciously or unconsciously decided to die?”

  Paris. That was Holden’s first thought, and he knew Dylan was thinking the same thing and didn’t want to think it. He wanted some other reason than his boyfriend still being in love with a dead man. So Holden thought of another reason to give him, which sounded very plausible. “He’s burned out. He’s been told he’s going to die most of his life, and he hasn’t yet. So fuck it. He probably feels close to invincible as it is. He’s the closest thing to a superhero I’ve ever met.”

  “Yeah. And there’s Paris.”

  So Dylan said it. Good for him. “Roan pretends he’s not haunted by his ghost, but clearly he is.”

  “Yeah. I really can’t compete with a dead man,” Dylan admitted, and it sounded like admitting defeat, which it was. He sighed and idly stirred his tea, the spoon softly ringing off the sides of the mug. The mug had a smiling cartoon bear on it hugging a heart, with the words I Don’t Understand Your Hostility Towards Me encircling it. Holden knew that was Roan’s mug. Dylan made the decision to change the subject, and then he did. “So why the house call? You could have phoned.”

  “Yeah, except my cell phone battery’s dead, and I just got in from Sea Tac late last night. I’ve spent the last few days in Vegas with my pilot client.”

  “Really? Did he pay you, or—”

  “Oh hell yeah he paid me. He also gave me a free ticket. Get this—he told the flight staff I was his nephew.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did, and they seemed to buy it. Except for this queeny air steward who seemed to know instinctively I was a hustler and gave me the cold shoulder.”

  Dylan squirmed uncomfortably, shifting on the couch and taking a sip of his tea before asking hesitantly, “Isn’t he the one who, um—”

  “Pays me to tie him up and humiliate him? Yes. He remains a curious client, but a loyal one. And I can’t say he didn’t show me a decent time, as he gave me free run of his minibar and room service.”

  “You have a strange life.”

  He said it so deadpan and mild Holden almost laughed. “Tell me about it. I did check my messages, and I discovered Fiona had called me and left me a message about Roan’s latest case. I’ve got people out looking for more info, but I had some for him anyways. I also had a gift.”

  “Oh boy, did you get him a tacky souvenir?”

  “More like a tacky trinket I picked up in a Las Vegas pawn shop. And no, I didn’t pawn anything. I don’t gamble. If I wanted to waste my money, I’d buy lottery tickets like everyone else. I was just doing a bit of window-shopping with everyone else’s misery.” He pulled the gift out of the pocket of his jeans and put it on the coffee table.

  Dylan sat forward and examined it curiously. “Oh, how ’bout that. It is very tacky.”

  “And one hundred percent pewter. If that’s worth anything, and I don’t think it is.” It was a ring shaped like a lion’s head, with a mane large enough to cover the lower half of the finger.

  “I’m sure he’ll love it. Which bothers me.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “So what information did you have for him?”

  “Hawley was no walker. Might have been trans, but not a hooker, not to anyone’s knowledge, and we would know.”

  “Would you? I mean, you’re not unionized.”

  “No, but there’s always a way to find out who’s working what corner. No hooker is ever alone on a street, and we use a lot of the same motels. It’s a smaller world than you’d think.”

  “I’m sure. If the johns knew, they might be a little scared by it.”

  “A little? A lot. For good reason.”

  Dylan nodded, looking down at his mug, his attention wandering elsewhere. They were silent for a moment, and Holden felt that something was going desperately wrong here. Dylan was depressed and probably sleep deprived, but he wasn’t the type to open up to him. He knew that Dylan really didn’t like him that much, and yet he seemed to be confiding in him. Was he that lonely? Was he feeling that lost?

  Dylan sagged back on the sofa and stared at him almost boldly, his dark brown eyes set like stone. “You love him too. What would you do if you were me?”

  Holden stared back at him, but he was so flabbergasted by what Dylan had said it took him a moment to speak. “Uh, what? I don’t love Roan. I like the guy, but—”

  “Oh please, I’ve had enough self-deception from Ro. Please don’t you do it too.”

  “Dylan, I don’t. I don’t want him and he doesn’t want me. He’s all yours.”

  He scoffed faintly. “You’re a gay man. I don’t have to explain the difference between love and desire to you. You can want a person without loving them, but the opposite also holds true. Look, I know you’re not a threat to our relationship, so I’m not gonna go crazy-ass jealous on you. I just want to know why you haven’t given up on him yet.”

  Holden wasn’t sure if he should be angry, offended, or amused. All three? (And actually, he wouldn’t mind doing Roan. Yeah, it’d be pretty weird considering their relationship now, but he’d always left the invitation of doing him for free open. Well, he was a good-looking guy, there was no getting around that, and Holden was always impressed by his humor, which could be incredibly sexy on a guy. And it was probably the lion pheromones or something, but he did have a mysterious kind of magnetism. You kind of wanted to follow him, let him take the lead.) “Why not get crazy-ass jealous? I mean, that’s the least a guy could want.”

  “Because Roan isn’t li
ke that. He’s a nester. He grew up without a home, and now all he wants is a nice, stable home.”

  “Let me guess—you minored in psychology.”

  “I was trying to understand my dad,” he replied, a roundabout way of saying yes. “It didn’t work. And I’m not trying to offend you, although why you’d be offended by me saying you loved someone is a bit puzzling.”

  “I’m offended because you couldn’t be more wrong. He’s a friend, that’s all. I’m not capable of much more.”

  “Bullshit.” Dylan said without rancor. His voice was as weary as his posture, as the expression on his face. “You’d kill for him. I saw that when we were trying to solve the Newberry case without him. Even Dee saw it, and he gave me the oddest look. He asked me later if I was worried about that, and I said no, because I’m not. In a strange way, I wish I was.”

  Holden felt something cold settle in his gut, a twinge and a twist. This had all suddenly gone somewhere he didn’t want it to go, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure why. It almost felt like the walls were starting to close in. “I’m not explaining myself to you. I like the guy a lot, but that’s the end of it. Full stop. And if you want my opinion, you either get used to him or pack your bags now. Is he a moody son of a bitch? Hell yeah. Either he’ll snap out of this on his own or he’ll need a shock to snap him out of it, but he’s been a morose-leaning bastard since I’ve known him.” Holden stood up, feeling angry now. Maybe because he always hated being told how he felt about something. It seemed presumptuous, insulting, and arrogant to tell him how he felt. He’d hated it when his parents did it, and he had grown no fonder of it as an adult.

  Dylan looked up at him with something like surprise, eyebrows rising slightly. “Holden, I didn’t—”

  “Save it. I’m not the person you should be talking to anyways. You want Roan to get over himself? Tell him. He won’t be happy, but he’s not an idiot. Spell out your terms, and if he can’t live with them, leave.”

  Dylan made a noise of disbelief and put his mug down heavily on the coffee table. “Oh yeah, he could only be dead in a month. I should walk out on him.”

  “Oh please. He’s been dying since you met him. If you stay with him out of pity, he will resent the shit out of you. If you don’t like things, do something about it, or just sit down, shut up, and live with it.” He headed for the door, hoping he wasn’t storming out like a big drama queen, but… yeah, there was probably no avoiding that. Still, he had to leave because he was so angry he was sure he’d say something they’d both regret.

  Dylan said something, but Holden just ignored him. He hadn’t even told Dylan he knew the name Carey Switzer. In fact, he knew Switzer very well.

  And he could easily imagine him being a killer.

  5

  Psychosomatic

  It was day three when Dylan decided the Way of Water was just not going to work for him this week.

  It was something to strive for. It was the essence of Taoism basically: to be fluid, essential, give without taking, to be strong without being violent, to be calm and placid.

  Yeah. Not this month.

  Not that he didn’t want to be. Without Roan here, and with Doctor Rosenberg only letting him stay long enough to see Roan was fine before shooing him out of the hospital, he’d spent a lot of time at the Buddhist temple, working on his meditation techniques. But then he’d get frustrated, his mind wandering all over the place, so he’d come home and paint; but he found himself not wanting to paint, so he’d fill in for someone at work and find himself too exhausted and distracted to deal with customers. It was a vicious cycle that continued without ceasing. He even slept badly, so he was always tired.

  He’d come to the conclusion that living in Roan’s house without Roan here made him feel like a trespasser, or worse, a living ghost, haunting someone else’s house. What would he do without Roan exactly? What if he never came back?

  His mind just shied away from it. He couldn’t think it. It seemed impossible that Roan, probably the largest of the larger-than-life figures he’d ever met, could simply die, disappear, go away. He seemed almost mythical now. Or if he did die, it would be doing something big and splashy, something heroic and needlessly violent. He wasn’t the type to die in his sleep.

  So when Doctor Rosenberg called him on day three, his heart lurched, but she said quickly, in her smoke-husky voice, that nothing was wrong with Roan; she just needed Dylan to come down to her office as soon as he could. That happened to be the moment he’d given up on the Way of Water (fuck his laundry; he could do that any time), and he raced there in the rain, finding all the traffic lights working against him as he tried to figure out why she’d want to see him. Was she lying about nothing being wrong? She must have been. She just didn’t want him to freak out. So he tried very hard not to freak out in traffic, and when he parked his car, he made sure no one was around before screaming at the top of his lungs. Sometimes it was cleansing to let out the pain and fear, but today all it did was make his throat hurt.

  Dylan was shaking a little when he finally got up to Doctor Rosenberg’s office at the university hospital, but she thought he was just soaked from the rain and chided him in a motherly fashion for not wearing a warmer coat. Her office smelled faintly of cigarettes, although there were no ashtrays in evidence. There was a small explosion of paper covering her desk, little drifts of mail, a flat-screen computer, and a complicated-looking phone. Her carpet was dark green, her walls an off gold like old ivory, and along with framed degrees was what looked like a picture of a fractal in a metal frame but was apparently a microscopic photo of a virus. She had a half-dead ficus tucked away near the window, which had a fantastic view of the back quad parking lot.

  No family photos? No personal photos of any kind. Did she even have a family? There was something about her intensity that screamed “meddling grandma” to Dylan, but on the other hand, that single-minded focus and dedication to her work could have left her alone. Considering the sheer number of degrees and awards on her wall, he had no idea when she would have had time to get married or start a family. That just ate up too much time.

  As soon as Dylan sat in the worn, padded chair she had in front of her chipped wooden desk, she started typing, her fingers flying over the keyboard, chewing on a pencil like she wanted a cigarette. Just as Dylan was about to break the silence, she took the pencil out and said, “I’m just gonna give it to you in layman’s terms, okay? Roan doesn’t need to be here. He never needs to be here again.”

  Maybe it was sleep deprivation, but that made no sense to him. “Huh?”

  “He’s out of viral sequence. Permanently, as far as I can tell.”

  She was speaking neither English nor Spanish; she wasn’t speaking a language he could understand. “What? Are you saying he’s cured?”

  “Oh God no! How would that happen? I’m just saying he isn’t a slave to his viral cycle anymore. I think it’s a slave to him.”

  “Again—huh? What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying he’s not changing this month, not without conscious thought. There are certain hormones, viral proteins, and neurotransmitters that increase when a change is imminent. Did Roan ever tell you he almost agreed to a clinical trial a few years ago? It was during Paris’s last days. He only came in to test for it ’cause he wanted to see if it would save Paris, but he was too sick to participate, and Roan wasn’t gonna do the trial without him. I took blood samples then, and I compared them with blood samples I took from Roan just an hour ago. And his virus has changed shape. In the last couple of years, it’s… mutated. Or been forced to mutate, perhaps by the increase of CD8+ T cells in his system. He can change basically at will. We all know that, right? By doing this, he’s disrupted the natural rhythm. There isn’t one anymore, not for him. His viral protein levels, hormones, and neurotransmitter levels are now naturally higher than normal because he needs to be ready to go at any point. His body and the virus have both adapted to this new reality.”

  Dy
lan decided he was going to be like stone, and the information, like water, would flow over him, and he would make sense of it as it went by. He tried very hard. But the conclusions he reached didn’t make much sense. “You’re saying he doesn’t need to change a few days a month anymore? He doesn’t need the cage?”

  “Exactly. No point.”

  “But he just changed last month. For four days!”

  She nodded, like she expected to hear this. “Yes, because he thought he was going to.”

  Being stone was just as hard as being water. There was surely a lesson in that. “What? Are you saying he… he did it to himself?”

  “In a sense. Not deliberately. He expected it to happen, and it did, because he was expecting it to. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. He’s probably been psychosomatically changing for… well, fuck if I know. But for a bit, certainly.”