Prey (26 page)

He was good-looking, funny, smart, but they just didn’t work as a couple, which was kind of a shame. They were, sadly, better friends.

Dee squeezed his bicep as he sat down, and Roan scowled at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing how strong you are now, macho man. Jesus, have you been working out?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He scoffed. “It means what it means. Did you see how you fucked-up that perv’s arm? To get a complete spiral fracture like that, you must be in the bodybuilder category now. How much do you bench?”

That made no sense… except in retrospect he remembered how liquid his muscles had felt when he got mad, when he let the beast peek out, and suddenly he wondered if the shift made him stronger. It must have. Hadn’t he always been aware that he was at his strongest when he was mad or hurt? The transformation from human to cat did change your body; why wouldn’t it effect your strength levels? “I dunno. I’ve just been borrowing Paris’s weight set from time to time.”

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“Time to time? Somebody’s being modest. Have you been replaced by a pod person?” Roan glared at him, but it only made Diego grin, flashing blinding white teeth. “How’s Paris?”

Dee was one of the few exes that Paris knew about; in fact, they’d met. They got on so well it made him wonder if he really was attracted to a certain type of guy. If asked, Roan would have claimed he had no type, but he was no longer sure. “He’s good. He’s going in for his routine checkup next week.” Tiger-strain people always needed to go in for checkups after the high point in the viral cycle, just to make sure there weren’t any aneurysms waiting to explode or that their hearts weren’t damaged. The older they got, the more vital this became.

“Good. And let me say, on behalf of the entire gay male community, we hate your fucking guts ’cause you landed him. Share, you selfish bastard.”

Roan chuckled, although he really hadn’t wanted to. Dee and Par had that in common: they could always make him laugh. “Let me officially say, to the entire community, tough titties.”

“I just knew you’d say something like that. Creep.” He sighed dramatically, but then changed the subject. “By the way, your arm isn’t fractured; you just have some tissue damage.”

“I figured.” His fingers on his right arm tingled a bit, but mostly his arm just ached. He’d get over it.

“Why didn’t someone get you an ice pack? I’ll go get you one—”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t need it, really.”

“Being macho again?”

“No. I’ve just had worse. I’ll live.” He felt Dee’s suspicious glare, but didn’t turn to acknowledge it. “Can I ask you a bizarre question?”

“Do you ask any others?”

He ignored that. “Do you know anything about polycythemia vera, a blood cell disorder?”

Dee thought about that a moment, staring down at the foam-green tiled floor and frowning. “Specifically? No, I’d have to look it up. Why?”

“Do you have any idea why a thirteen-year-old boy would get a blood disorder specific to middle-aged men?”

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He gave Roan a suspicious look, one that seemed to say
What are
you up to now, freak-o?
, but he did give him a serious answer. “Well, if the kid had an immune system disorder, he could be susceptible to almost anything. Age would be irrelevant.”

“What kind of immune system disorders are we talking about?

AIDS?”

“That would be the most devastating, sure; people with that have been known to die from diseases that humans aren’t supposed to be susceptible to.” After a pause, he added, “Being infected can do that to people sometimes too.”

That was news to him. “Since when?”

“Well, some infectees’ systems don’t take the major infections quite well, mostly tiger. But mainly it’s the virus children. You’re a bit of a miracle, Roan, although I’m sure you’ll roll your eyes at that. You’re a fully functional virus child; that’s about as rare as surviving a tiger infection. Most viral kids are damaged on the genetic level; they get diseases that come out of nowhere within their respective families, like progeria, Tay-Sachs—”

“—and maybe something like polycythemia vera?” he interrupted, feeling his skin prickle as the answer seemed to explode in his mind. Oh shit. It all made sense now. He didn’t have all the answers, but damn if he couldn’t see the through line, the connecting thread between it all, the bits and pieces falling into a shattered picture. He jumped off the exam table, no longer aware of how much his arm hurt or how bad he felt for not finding Danny sooner. “Oh God, I know who killed Hank DeSilvo.” He grabbed Dee’s face in his hands and planted a quick, friendly kiss on his lips. “Thank you. Remind me to buy you a drink sometime.”

As he left the exam room, wondering where the hell Sikorski was now, Dee called out, sounding flustered, “What the hell did I say?”

He found Seb first, nursing a cup of the toxic swill that passed for coffee in the hospital, and Gordo wasn’t far away; he was talking on his cell to someone down at the station. As soon as Gordo saw him, he told the person on the end of the line to hold on, and gave him a piercing look.

“What now? I really hate that look on your face, Roan.”

“You need to bring Mitch Henstridge in now.”

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was more deadpan. “Did they give you pain medication? Are you having a reaction?”

“I’m not asking for an APB; just bring him in for questioning, that’s all I ask. Do it now before he skips town… if he hasn’t already. If he was at all smart he’d have already run, but I don’t know if he has any further loose ends to tie up or not.”

Gordo’s look was one of stark disbelief. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“Henstridge killed DeSilvo, and probably Tweaks as well.”

Now he looked downright hostile. “You telling me he’s a killer cat, is that it?”

Roan felt his stomach start to burn. It felt like damning, outing, and he wasn’t sure how it worked precisely, but it was the only thing that made sense. The Nakamuras instinct had been right about Danny’s disappearance: although he left voluntarily, he didn’t end up where he expected to. His instinct was right that Hatch was hiding something. Now it was Sikorski’s turn to be right about a virus child mutation. “No. His son is.”

THE tiger paced in its cage restlessly, not understanding the bars but enraged with them all the same. Biting them didn’t work, and swiping them with its claws did no good either. Sometimes if it threw its body against it, it would hear a rattle, feel a shift, but nothing else happened.

It stunk of humans here, but there was another scent, one that nearly drove it into a frenzy: another cat. It was faint though, tangled with a human scent, enough to confuse it. Was the cat here, or had one once been here? It thought if one was here the scent would be more tangible, that it would be able to smell the blood as well as the musk, hear the other cat’s heartbeat. But all was silence and cold, and not even the human scent was strong anymore.

It had lain down on the hard floor, giving up, when it heard a noise.

It was a strange noise somewhere above its head; it could see nothing but the same pale orb of light that was always there, but the noises—strange, unidentifiable, far—continued. A faint scent eventually 158

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came with it, a new human scent, and.…

… a cat.

This was a new cat. A new musk, and better yet, new blood, a new heartbeat. On its territory. The scent was above its head somewhere, above the glowing orb, and there was no containing its frenzy now. This was its territory, its, and no other cat was allowed.

The tiger began throwing itself against the bars of the cage, the pain only making it that much more determined to escape and rip the other cat’s throat out.

THE plywood plank had been nailed to the back door far more expertly than he had thought. Mitch had had to go back to his car and get his tire iron to pry up a corner of it, and he was glad that McKichan lived so far from his neighbors. He had to break the panel to get a big enough opening, but it would do. Whoever had put that up had done a damn good job, though.

In all honesty, he hadn’t wanted to do this; he didn’t want to be here.

This was all Hank’s fault.

If he hadn’t been a cop, he’d have been a thief; Hank had even told him that once. But Mitch hadn’t really believed it until the money was on offer, and that’s when Hank’s ugly true colors started bleeding through. He was going to fuck him and Mitch knew it. Mitch needed the money, Hank knew that, and yet Hank intended to fuck him out of it anyway. Hank had even made vague noises about the truth about Mitch’s son getting out, and that was the last straw. Fuck him over? Fine. But no one fucked over his son.

Mikey was getting harder and harder to control, possibly due to puberty. He strained at the leash, so Mitch let him go, detaching the lead from his shock collar, and whispered, “Go upstairs, boy. Go get the man.”

Even in the dimness, he could see that the living room he was in was astonishingly ordinary, a living room like any other. He had expected different, although he didn’t know what. He supposed that a gay guy would have a more flamboyant place, something a bit more extravagant.

He had absolutely nothing against McKichan at all; he didn’t know Infected: Prey

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him, and frankly, he didn’t want to know him. A kitty fag? Great—the worst of both worlds. But he’d heard from his buddies in the department that he was digging around, that he’d started investigating Hank, and for some reason had turned his sights on him. That was intolerable; he was getting too close.

And he wasn’t even on the fucking force anymore! Why wasn’t someone reining him in? Why was someone letting him investigate cops?

In a way, this was his fault. If he’d just minded his own business, he’d have gotten to live.

But Mitch felt somewhat bad about his boyfriend. He probably had no idea what McKichan was up to, and yet he was sending Mikey up to kill him. He was shocked by his own feelings, because gay guys usually made his skin crawl a bit. Who’d want to fuck a man? Seriously. A naked man wasn’t an attractive thing. The sheer size of the boyfriend had surprised him; he had the shoulders of a linebacker. He didn’t think they made gay guys that big… but there was that transvestite he arrested that one time, wasn’t there? That guy had been six-six and nearly three hundred pounds if he’d been an ounce. Scary.

The problem was those kids. He hadn’t been able to sleep since he’d had to take out those kids at Tweaks’s. But he didn’t have a choice, much like with McKichan’s boyfriend. The kids could have identified him, and God knew who Tweaks had talked to. They had to go, much like the boyfriend had to go. He had to protect Mikey.

He was a special boy, with special needs. If he didn’t take care of him, who would? They’d probably throw him in a fucking zoo or something. He had to stay out of prison to take care of him, especially now.

Mikey made a strange noise, a growling whimper, and seemed reluctant to approach the stairs. He pulled out the collar control and gave him a little shock, adding insistently, “Go.” The cat that he was twitched its tail in annoyance, but after a moment’s further hesitation, Mikey loped upstairs, as quietly as a… cat, which figured.

He knew McKichan was gone, and he had no idea when he’d be back, but he was prepared to wait. He’d had to wait for Tweaks too, and that fucking space brain never even noticed that everyone was dead.

Supposedly, McKichan would be more on the ball—no pun intended—but he’d get him as soon as he came in the door. He might be armed, and 160

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gunfire might get attention before he could get out of here.

Mitch waited at the base of the stairs, stomach knotting as he braced himself for the aborted scream of someone waking up to find a cat ripping out their throat, when he heard a strange noise. It was like a muffled, metallic clang, but very faint. He looked down at the carpet, and wondered if it had come from beneath the house. Did they have a basement? Was the boyfriend down there at this time of night?

Now there was another noise, one that was growing louder. It was a repetitive thudding, almost a gallop, and as he turned he saw a door on his immediate left. He’d thought it was a closet, but now he wondered if it was the basement door, and pulled out his revolver.

Hardly in time. The basement door didn’t open so much as it exploded off its hinges, and it slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. The door pinned his legs down with a tremendous weight, and he saw why the door was so heavy—there was a big, fucking tiger on it.

The cat was huge, its head almost twice as big as his, and it roared at him, its fetid breath washing over him, saliva dripping down from its large, ivory teeth. Its amber eyes were almost lambent in the dark, and he finally understood why Mikey hadn’t wanted to come in here.

He hadn’t considered the fact that maybe the boyfriend was infected too. But even if he had, he was sure he never would have entertained the possibility that he was a fucking tiger.

Mitch raised his weapon, and wondered if a bullet would even make a dent in this beast’s skull.

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17

Cat People

YES, the theory had very obvious holes in it, but it felt right. The motive was there: money, connected to some sort of illegal activity that took place at the Edgewood house (which would explain Tweaks as a loose end; perhaps he was a witness, if not openly involved). How Henstridge could

“control” his infected son he had no idea, but he was sure that was the real cause of the son’s medical condition, and the real cause of his wife’s death.

Although Paris was one of the few exceptions, it was extremely rare for an infected woman to infect a man. The nature and mechanics of sex always made it easier for the man to infect the woman (or other men). As for why Henstridge would hide the fact that his son and wife were infected… well, who wouldn’t hide it if they could? There was still a huge stigma attached to infection, and it could have had a huge, negative impact on his career, or at least Henstridge might reasonably fear that that could be the case. Sure, the PD took Roan on as an officer, but only after a major lawsuit involving accusations (fairly well-proven) of sexism and racism in the department: he’d been part of public relations blitz and nothing more.