Infected: Lesser Evils (2 page)

He just wished he could’ve made Dylan rich.

About two hours after the last light went off in Nadia’s house, when his audiobook was done and he was listening to These Arms Are Snakes’ album
Easter
, he saw movement on the grass plot of the trailer next to Nadia’s, someone trying to sneak past, avoiding the gravel on the street and the porch lights on in front of most of the trailers. Was it some guy stumbling home drunk, or had Mike made his job easier by coming after her his first night on the job?

He couldn’t get a good look at the guy’s face, but the build looked similar. (He was wearing all dark clothes too, the bastard.) There was a glint of metal as he removed something from beneath his jacket, and Roan didn’t think it was a gun. A knife? Maybe a crowbar. But he didn’t like the fact that the guy was making a beeline for her trailer.

Roan ripped off his iPod and called 9-1-1 on his cell, using the ID number he had with the police department. Okay, it only identified him as a “consultant,” someone on the periphery of actual police work, but they’d act faster (at least in theory). He left the line open and dropped the phone on the floor after giving the address, climbing out the window and sprinting across the street toward Nadia’s trailer.

Mike was in his own world, he didn’t hear him or see him, so Roan pulled out his MagLite and twisted it on, shining it in his startled face. “Stop right there, Mike. Drop it.” Mike turned toward him, his face already a mask of belligerence. Roan could smell beer on him, but not enough to call him drunk.

“Who the fuck ’re you?” he snapped. “Get off my property.”

“This isn’t your property. It’s Nadia’s, and you’re violating the restraining order. I’m giving you a chance you don’t deserve. Leave, now.” It was a crowbar, and currently he was holding it like a bat, the metal bar hanging down beside his leg.

Mike scowled at him. Roan could see every bit of his stubble, like tiny iron filings driven into his pores. “You the guy she’s fucking, huh?”

Roan scoffed. “Why do you abusive assholes always say that? Just ’cause you’re cheating on her doesn’t mean she’s cheating on you.”

Mike took a step toward him, tapping the crowbar against his leg. “Get the fuck outta here before I shove this up your ass.”

Roan knew exactly what this comment would do, how Mike would react to it, but he made it anyways. Once a smartass, always a smartass. “Oh, so you’re gay now, are you?”

Mike charged, giving Roan a one-handed shove to the chest that sent him back a couple of steps as he brought the crowbar up with his other hand, going for the head. If Roan had been normal, he’d probably have had his skull pounded in. Luckily, he wasn’t.

He brought up his left arm to block the crowbar, and at the same time threw a right cross that he judged to be pretty soft, but hard enough to send Mike a message.

And that’s where it went horribly wrong.

He heard the crack of bone on impact, and since he didn’t feel any unusual pain in his hand, assumed he’d just broken Mike’s jaw or cheekbone. But Mike dropped like a stone and started seizing the moment he hit the ground, back arching and limbs flailing like he was trying to fight off some invisible beast. Roan had two seconds to process what he was seeing and realized, with a wrenching, stinging sensation in his gut, that he no longer had any ability to judge how hard he was hitting anyone.

He hadn’t broken Mike’s jaw. He’d broken his skull.

He dropped to his knees and confirmed Mike’s airway was clear, really the only thing you could do for a seizing person. He was aware that a light had come on in Nadia’s trailer about the time Mike had tried to stave his head in with the crowbar, but he hadn’t paid any attention to it. Now he heard the door open, and without looking back, he told her, “Call 9-1-1 and tell them Roan McKichan requests an ambulance ASAP at this location. Got it?”

He saw a rectangle of light on the patchy square of ground that passed for Nadia’s “lawn.” She was in the doorway, a watching shadow, but she had yet to move. “Why?” she finally asked, and in it he heard the years of bitterness, the cold hatred aimed squarely at her soon-to-be ex (or late) husband, the type of hate you could really only have for someone you used to love. He wondered if Dylan would ever take on that tone while talking about him.

“Do it!” he snapped, not caring if she took some of his rage. The one person he really wanted to get angry at was himself, but he knew from having actually tried it that beating up yourself did no good at all, and was never as satisfying as it should have been.

She finally disappeared inside the trailer again, taking her sweet time about it, and he heard the siren of a police car, faint but growing louder.

This had been such a horrible mistake. After what Rosenberg had told him, he shouldn’t even be around Humans anymore.

He closed his eyes and punched the ground until he felt a bone in his hand shift and break, and he had to swallow back a roar that was more anger than pain.

He’d always known he was a freak among freaks, but after this, everybody was going to know.

Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise

R
OAN
was prepared to be arrested. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t happen.

He didn’t know either of the cops who arrived, but they seemed to know who he was, and as he told them what happened, Nadia came out and verified his story, agreeing that Roan only hit him with his fist, and he’d only punched him after Mike tried to hit him with the crowbar. This was a lie, as Nadia wasn’t out in time to see it, but they believed her, and he wasn’t about to point out his client was lying.

When the EMTs arrived, he recognized the female one as Nicole Corbett, one of Dee’s friends. As such, she gave him an out. When he said he’d punched Mike and fractured his skull, she shook her head and said, “Unless he has brittle bone disease, I doubt it. It was probably the way he hit the ground.”

Her partner bought it, as did the cops, but he wondered if that would last. He hoped so, but he wouldn’t count on it. Especially once the X-rays were taken.

They stabilized Mike and got him out in the ambulance, and the cops told him the usual: don’t leave the state, we’ll call with any further questions, yada yada yada. So he got a pass. He’d fractured some poor bastard’s skull, and he got a pass. Okay, yeah, he was clearly the king of the douche bags, but it still didn’t seem right.

Roan collected his things from the trailer and went home, feeling numb to his core. Could he do this anymore? What else could he do?

He couldn’t be around Humans anymore. What was he supposed to do?

He was kind of hoping Dylan would be asleep when he got home, but he wasn’t. He was sitting on the couch, working on his sketchpad, and when Roan came in the door, he started to ask him how things went, but stopped when he looked at his face. “Oh god, what went wrong?”

He felt so tired, so terrible and almost feverish, that he had no will to even lie. He told Dylan what had happened, and admitted that he was getting less Human as time went on, that he was becoming unrecognizable even to himself. His hand was hurting but he ignored it—the Vicodin probably helped there—but it was starting to swell and Dylan saw that. He got him an ice pack and wanted to take him to the emergency room, but Roan informed him he never needed to see a doctor for a broken bone—he could just force a change, and his bones would heal right up. That’s what they did when he transformed: they broke themselves and then reset in another configuration. He was the Amazing Bone-Snapping Man, and he could do it at will. He even had extra tendons. Rosenberg had told him that last bit; the scans revealed tendons that had never been seen in a Human body before, and no one was sure what to make of them. Even she wasn’t sure what their function was, except perhaps they were the “backup”—when he transformed, his tendons and muscles tore too, and healed, but the spare tendons simply stretched and didn’t tear, so they were ready to go when he transformed from Human to lion, no healing time necessary. More of his body’s adaptation to the new regime.

Dylan held him and kissed him, and that’s when he noticed. “Are you running a fever?”

“My body temperature goes up with a change. That and my blood pressure.”

“But you didn’t change.”

“I did, but I didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Tell me about it.” He felt tired and a bit dizzy, so Dylan led him upstairs and tucked him into bed, and whispered words of comfort to him that he appreciated without actually listening to what was being said. Roan didn’t actually care what he was saying anyways, it didn’t matter.

Things weren’t all right, and they wouldn’t ever be all right.

D
YLAN
held Roan until he was sure he had fallen asleep, wondering if now that he’d admitted the truth he’d sleep any better.

Ever since coming back from Willow Creek, Roan had slept really poorly, although he probably didn’t know Dylan knew that. He probably thought he was being crafty, sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to read or work on the heavy bag in his office. Sometimes Dylan heard him, or just woke up to find himself alone, although a quick check would confirm that Roan was downstairs.

Some people worried that their partner or spouse was cheating on them. Him, he worried his was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

He quietly crept out of the bedroom, heading back downstairs to retrieve his sketchpad. He’d been making some sketches for Jade, Roan’s infected tattoo artist friend, as she was willing to pay him for his designs, and he figured why the hell not. Art was art, whether it was on a wall or on your arm.

He checked the time, and figured it wasn’t necessarily too late, so he called Dee. Although he sounded slightly rushed when he answered his cell, Dee didn’t tell him he was busy. Dylan asked if he knew what had happened with Roan tonight, but it was a stupid question, because of course he did.

Dee confirmed that the X-rays seemed to indicate a blow to the side of the head was responsible for the guy’s skull fracture; it wasn’t impact with the ground. But since few people could punch that hard, there seemed to be a general consensus of freak accident that Dee was doing his best to encourage. The one bright spot here was the guy was probably going to live.

“How’s he doing?” Dee asked, referring to Roan.

“Honestly? Horribly. He’s pretending he’s not falling apart, but he’s unraveling, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You know, I don’t get that. If someone told me I was better than Human, I’d get me a nifty spandex outfit and a publicist.”

Dylan sighed irritably. Dee was just trying to be funny, but there was a kernel of truth in there as well. “He’s been different all his life. He wants to be less different, not more, but every time he turns around he’s getting more different. I think he feels he’s getting farther and farther away from the Human, and yes, while that sounds like a marvelous idea, it isn’t to Roan. The thought of it is killing him.”

Dee sighed. “Oh, the big drama queen.”

“You know, I appreciate you trying to be funny, but not right now. He’s barely hanging on. You should have seen his face when he came home tonight.”

“What, he looked like he killed someone?”

“Worse. He looked like he had given up. And the way he talked—” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes, unaware he was tearing up until he could feel the drops running from his eyelids. “Fuck. I want to help him, but I don’t know how.”

“Give him pills.”

“Would you stop? I’m serious.”

“Me too.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“Stop. Okay, look, he won’t talk to a therapist, will he?”

“No. He’ll barely talk to me. Why, I don’t know. No, I do, but I’m pretending I don’t.” Because Dylan had freaked out and almost left him after seeing him partially transformed. But it wasn’t that, not really; he knew from the beginning that Roan wasn’t your average person. It was just the idea that he wasn’t telling him anything, that he was keeping him out of his life completely. At first he thought it was because he really didn’t love him—Roan didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t love Dylan. Eventually he decided the problem was Roan himself: he was scared of what he was becoming, of what was happening to him, and had decided the best way to handle it was to completely deny it. It wasn’t an ideal way of handling anything, but he had this sinking feeling Roan was tired of being who he was. He wasn’t stupid enough to commit suicide… maybe. Dylan no longer knew. He just knew Roan was tired of being a “freak” (Roan’s term), and there was no fixing that.

Dee sighed. “Then you know what you have to do.”

He did, and he didn’t like it. “Talk to Doctor Rosenberg.”

“She gets through to him where others fail. He won’t like it, but what does he like nowadays? Call her.”

“He’ll hate me.”

“He won’t. He might be angry, but not for long.”

He knew Dee was right, but it felt like a kind of betrayal to go behind Roan’s back and talk to his doctor. Still, she was a formidable person, and Roan was at his best when he faced off with someone equal to or stronger than him. She would kick his ass, and he probably needed it.

But it was too late to call tonight. After getting off the phone, he wandered back upstairs and watched Roan sleep for a few minutes, wondering if that twitch in his hand meant anything, if it was at all related to the movement behind his eyelids.

Lately, Roan had taken to occasionally growling in his sleep, a deep, throaty rumble that had scared him awake the first time he heard it. Dylan had thought maybe an angry wolf had somehow found a way into their bedroom, although why he’d thought that first he had no idea. A sleeping mind was a strange thing.

And a sleeping lion’s mind was probably stranger than most.

A
SUDDEN
feeling of impending attack woke Roan up.

It was stupid of course, insane, and he knew it the minute he opened his eyes and sat up. Some lingering dream fear, a nightmare already forgotten.