Prey (34 page)

He and Paris didn’t speak until they got back to the car. Thunder rolled in the distance, and Roan could smell the rain coming in, but they reached the car just as it started coming down, fat drops as warm as blood.

Once they were inside, the rain started sheeting down, pounding on the roof of the car like an angry mob.

“That was really weird,” Paris finally said, staring out at the rain streaming down the windshield. The water seemed to obscure everything now; they could have been at the bottom of a lake. “Do you think we’re going to get in?”

Roan nodded. “I’m sure there’s a vetting process, but as long as we keep to the script we should be able to get inside without a problem.”

After a moment, he said, “You changed your backstory.”

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Paris shrugged a single shoulder, continuing to do everything but look at him. It was forced nonchalance, and Roan wasn’t buying it. “It seemed better, more honest somehow.”

He did what he’d wanted to do back at the church. He touched Paris’s face, trailing his fingers lightly over his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Paris looked at him finally and seemed startled. “About what?”

“What happened to you.”

For a long moment he just stared at Roan, something like panic flashing through his eyes as the percussion of the rain filled the car with noise. Paris finally decided to say something, but he cut himself off, grimacing painfully, and then leaned over, burying his face in the side of his neck. Roan put his arm around him as Paris broke down into huge, wracking sobs, the kind that you couldn’t hold back and felt like they were punching their way out of you. He didn’t know what to do or say, so he just held him, resting his head against his, and let him cry, stroking his back and occasionally saying soothing things that meant absolutely nothing. His heart broke for him. Maybe Paris was as far from a saint as you could possibly get, but he didn’t deserve what had happened to him; no one deserved that. No one deserved to have their life destroyed or their body ravaged by a virus that killed you a little bit every passing month and very nearly robbed you of your sanity.

Tears soaked his shirt, he could feel them sliding down his neck, and through the window of water he saw a brief, bright flash in the sky that was soon followed up by a grumble of thunder that seemed so close it felt like it shook the car. Paris was clinging to him desperately, shuddering as he tried to fight back the tears, but they came out of him anyway. He had no idea Paris had so much pain in him. He was always the guy with the joke, the smart remark, turning everything into a comedy routine, but what kind of detective was he that he couldn’t see that was a deliberate choice on Paris’s part so he didn’t he have to deal with any of this shit? Roan was so concerned with the “big” stuff he kept missing the little stuff. He should just turn in his license now.

The storm raged inside and out for about ten minutes, during which the lightning and thunder seemed to grow closer and then went away, surging past like an inconstant tide. Paris finally managed to get a hold of himself, probably just running out of tears, and he sniffed and shifted uncomfortably, embarrassed by this violently emotional display. He leaned 210

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back against the seat and looked out the passenger window at the water sluicing down the glass, wiping tears and snot from his face with his forearm. Roan wanted to tell him he shouldn’t be embarrassed, that he shouldn’t feel bad for finally letting it out, but he wasn’t sure how to say any of this. So he just started the car and drove away.

They rode home in silence, the rain gradually letting up, going from a torrent to a milder cascade, but visibility remained piss-poor and the gutters on the side of the streets filled up fast. The water was spilling onto the road, and he supposed it was a good thing they were getting off the street, as everybody around here seemed to forget how to drive in the rain and needlessly freaked out about it. Either they had outpaced the thunder and lightning or it had gone in the opposite direction.

Since Roan was already drenched from Paris’s tears, he didn’t care about getting soaked, which turned out to be a good thing because he was a drowned rat by the time he got in the house. Not that he was complaining, they needed the rain after the long, abnormally hot summer, but he hated feeling clammy.

Paris had his back to him; he was just standing at the base of the stairs, water dripping from his hair and pattering on the floor, and he seemed to have the frozen, distracted air of someone who suddenly isn’t certain why they’d come into a room.

He waited a very long moment, slipping off his coat and hanging it on a hook parallel to the door, adding his dripping cap afterward. “Par?”

He wondered how upset he still was. The grief process, especially when you were basically mourning your own broken life, could be a weird one.

Paris slowly turned to face him, his eyes red rimmed from tears and his hair plastered to his face in spidery wisps, and Roan saw this look come into his eyes. It was need, almost fury, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to kiss him or hit him as he approached.

Luckily Paris went for the kiss, but it was hungry and violent, so raw it caught Roan off guard. Paris snaked his hand under his wet shirt, pulling it up and peeling it off of him as he briefly broke away. He tossed the shirt aside and then took off his own, throwing it aside just as heedlessly. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said before kissing him again, pressing him back hard against the door.

Did he have a choice? Of course he did, but as Roan felt the hard, smooth muscles of Paris’s back move beneath his warm, damp skin, he Infected: Prey

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didn’t think he had the willpower or desire to remind Paris they were still technically on the clock. Besides, Paris probably just wanted to forget, to escape, and Roan didn’t think that was such a bad idea.

He just wished he knew what it was specifically that Paris was trying to forget.

THEY had dinner around ten o’clock that night, both too tired and too ravenous to call for delivery, so they just nuked some leftover Chinese food they had in the back of the fridge. It wasn’t moldy or furry, so Roan figured it was good enough.

They were still both damp, but at least it was from the shower, so they were warmer. It continued to sheet down outside; in the far corner of the kitchen, you could hear the gutter gurgling as it attempted to deal with the deluge. He wondered if he should clean the gutters, and then wondered if he had ever cleaned the gutters. He was new to this whole house owning thing—that was his excuse and he was sticking with it.

Par was sitting on the end of the couch watching
The Wire
on TV, dressed in black silk boxers with little red lipstick prints all over them (he loved that kind of tacky shit), feet propped up on the edge of the coffee table, eating mint chocolate chip ice cream directly from the carton. There was a spoon in the carton for Roan too, as Paris had figured there was so little left that there was no point in getting bowls, and he supposed he had a point. (And how lucky was he that he’d found someone else who liked mint chocolate chip ice cream? So many people hated it, and he had no idea why; that shit just rocked.)

Roan sat next to him, handing Paris his cup of tea. Beer and ice cream didn’t exactly go together, but Roan had felt like one anyway. For a technically short day, it had felt like a long one. He propped his feet up on the coffee table too, and noticed goose bumps on Par’s legs. See, that was why he was wearing the flannel pajama pants with the little cats all over them (Par’s idea of a joke): you couldn’t be damp and eat ice cream and not get cold.

After a few minutes of silence, Paris finally said, “I’m sorry about…

y’know, what happened in the car. I don’t know where that came from.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he replied. He wanted to tell 212

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him he knew where that came from, but didn’t mention it. Par knew too, he just didn’t want to admit it.

That just settled in the room for a moment, long enough for Roan to grab his spoon and help himself to some ice cream (yeah, it tasted really weird with beer), before Par added hesitantly, “I guess I don’t like to talk about it. It just seems like… it’s like it all happened to someone else, you know? It doesn’t even seem like my life anymore, just something that happened to somebody I’m not sure I know.”

“You can always talk to me about it, you know. I mean, I know my experience isn’t exactly similar, but I can listen.”

Paris glanced at him with a weak little smile. “I know. I guess it’s like you and the whole cat traits thing; it’s just not easy to talk about.” He had to bring that up, didn’t he? Oh well, fair enough. He put his hand on Roan’s chest and rubbed his thumb underneath his collarbone. “As this is, I’m sure.”

Paris wasn’t caressing his chest—he was tracing the scar across his torso, the one that ran from his shoulder to the hollow of his throat, the one he never talked about. Oh, there was the one on his face too, but it was small and of all of his scars it had faded most with age. This one hadn’t; this one would dog him forever. “Someday,” he said lamely. It was all he could offer right now.

Par nodded and seemed to accept that for now, letting his hand fall away. Enough time had passed to signal the change to a more comfortable topic. “That meeting wasn’t anything like I expected. It was like group therapy.”

“That’s the processed, user-friendly face of Humanity First. The real group, the more rabid side, won’t be visible until you go deeper. Kind of like their Web site.”

“Or Divine Transformation.”

“Exactly. It’s a cult buffer system.”

The telephone rang sharply, not so much startling Roan as annoying him. Everybody knew not to bother him during
The Wire
—who the fuck was calling now? He let it go to the machine.

The voice that responded to the message was heavily muffled, not professionally distorted but still very hard to understand. “Ask Elijah Infected: Prey

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about Melissa Prescott. He knows more than he’s said.”

A cold shock stabbed through him, and he exchanged a surprised look with Paris before scrambling to the other end of the couch and groping for the phone. He grabbed the receiver and asked, “Hello?

Wait—” But all he got was the drone of a dial tone; they’d already hung up.

Caller ID said the number was blocked, so he hit star sixty-nine to dial the number. But it rang and rang, at least twenty times, before he finally decided to hang up. Son of a bitch.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Paris asked. “Was that a prank?”

It was possible, but they’d have to know that Eli (Elijah) had hired him, and was concerned about the killed infecteds—and that latter information was not common knowledge.

Who the hell could know that much?

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5

A Prayer for Broken Stones

ROAN didn’t sleep well at all that night. He must have awoken three or four times and stared at the ceiling in the dark, listening to the rain hit the windows like thrown pebbles, the wind occasionally surging and slapping tree branches against the walls like waves against a ship. It wasn’t the noise keeping him awake, though.

It made perfect sense, didn’t it? Why Eli had not gone public with the news. If he was tied to one of the victims in a close way, he could fall into suspect territory. But then he would have to have been very close to Melissa Prescott to be so scared that his natural inclination toward shallow displays and PR blitzes would be curtailed. After the phone call, he told Paris he’d talk to Eli about it tomorrow, but Par seemed to think he was included in this. He wasn’t, not yet, but he wasn’t going to argue with him about it. There was nothing to argue about. He trusted Paris with his life, his business, all of it, but he wasn’t really a detective. He was, to use his own term, his “guy Friday.” Roan had to go this one alone.

While Paris was brushing his teeth, Roan did a quick bit of checking.

Melissa Prescott wasn’t what he would call gorgeous (okay, yeah, gay guy, but he knew attractive when he saw it, no matter the gender), but she did look young—extremely young. She was twenty years old, but with her perfectly round face, full apple-hued cheeks, pale blue doe eyes, and shoulder-length cascade of crimped honey blonde hair, she could have passed for fifteen or sixteen.

Eli had a thing about barely legal girls, didn’t he?

Melissa was his type all the way, with the added benefit that she was actually legal. Could she have been one of Eli’s many girlfriends? Part of his little “harem”? Now that the possibility had lodged in his brain, it seemed to fester, unwilling and unable to come out. Who was the other one of the four who went to the church? If it was Patrick, okay. But if it was Ashley or Christa….

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Those girls? He looked at their pictures too. They both looked younger than their ages; they both could’ve passed for sixteen. They both could have been Eli’s type.

He always fell back to sleep, although he was never quite sure how.

Finally the alarm went off, set to radio instead of that annoying buzzer, and he woke to the very loud swells of some bombastic classical music, lots of strings and deep wind instruments building to a crescendo (which included a gong; you always needed a gong), and he slapped the alarm in irritation, rolling away from the warmth of Paris’s side. Paris made a half-conscious noise and snuggled deeper into his pillow, not bothering to open his eyes. That was the thing, the habit; Roan got up when the first alarm went off, and Paris usually didn’t bother getting up until the snooze alarm went off. So Roan sat on the edge of the bed and simply switched the snooze alarm off. Yeah, Paris would probably be pissed off when he woke up and realized it, but he could always claim it was an accident; there was some benefit of the doubt there.

He took a quick shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to start the coffee. The smell would probably wake Paris up eventually, and he’d figured out he’d been ditched. He left a note on the fridge:
Following
something up. We’re closed today—enjoy your day off
. He filled a travel mug with coffee and got out of there.