DOCTOR ROSENBERG burst in without knocking while Roan was getting dressed. He’d only just gotten his underwear on, and he was kind of relieved, but then it occurred to him how many times she had seen him naked, and he realized it was a stupid thing to be embarrassed about. Still, it was an attempt at dignity.
“Look, asshole, how many times are we gonna have this conversation?” she began, as exasperated as she usually was with him. “You can’t just wake up from a coma and walk out of the hospital.”
“I told him,” Dylan said helplessly.
Roan pulled up his jeans, which were looser than before (funny, but that was the whole metabolism thing again), and said, “I’m fine. If I was a normal person, I’d agree, but I’m not. I’m well enough to leave. There’s no reason to keep me.”
“Except the lion came out while you were still human. And you have tumors we haven’t operated on. And, oh yeah, what about the fact that you had brain surgery, motherfucker? People just don’t get up and walk.”
Dylan actually grimaced and covered his mouth at the “motherfucker,” both horrified and deeply amused that Roan’s doctor just called him that. Roan was too accustomed to both her potty mouth and her general orneriness to be fazed by it. “I already have. Apparently I also fought a cat, which you’d think would be beyond someone who just had brain surgery.”
“Now you’re just being a smartass. That was the lion, not you.”
Finished zipping up his jeans, he moved on to his T-shirt. “We’re pretty much the same, aren’t we? Whatever he can do, I can do. We’re pilots of the same plane.”
“Which you’re gonna auger into the fucking ground. Look, I know you’re different than most, no one knows that better than me, but your body can only adapt so much before it snaps under the strain. Yeah, yours adapts more than most, but there’s a limit. And you won’t know that limit until your heart explodes.”
Roan shrugged on his shirt and unconsciously smoothed down his hair, even though his hair was still short enough that it was astonishingly pointless. It still surprised him because he wasn’t used to it yet. “Then I should enjoy my life while I still have it, huh?”
“Uh, exploding heart was an exaggeration, right?” Dylan asked warily.
Rosenberg just looked disgusted with Roan, which he was also used to. “You’re just gonna be a shithead and swan outta here, huh?”
“Swan? I don’t swan. If I’m in a good mood I might mince, but that’s it.”
She shook her head, not falling for the jokes. “You took out your IVs, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m not actively bleeding, so you don’t need to call out the HazMat team.”
She shifted her gaze to Dylan. “Got anything we can use on this asshole to control him?”
“What, do you mean withhold sex?”
“Would that work?”
Dylan and Roan shared a glance before Dylan said, “That punishes me for his bone-headedness, doesn’t it?”
She looked like she was going to reply to that, but thought better of it and decided to just glare at Roan again. “You have no idea if your supposition about the lion is correct. You’re guessing.”
“I am, sure. But are you gonna tell me, if I stay here another week, that you can do any better?”
She pointed a sharp finger at him. “You’re not so big that I can’t smack you.”
“If I get the sense something’s wrong, I promise I’ll come back.”
She scoffed. “Bullshit. You’re a macho asshole.”
“I’ll make him,” Dylan offered. “I can guilt him into it.”
“And you can’t guilt him into staying?”
Dylan grimaced ruefully. “I don’t want him to stay here.”
“See? My husband needs me at home.”
She really wasn’t happy with either of them, which was actually nice as now Dylan could share the cranky antipathy coming from his doctor. “You two,” she said, shaking her head. And with that cryptic comment, she left.
“What do you think that meant?” Dylan wondered.
“It means never come here for a prostate exam.”
“Believe me, I wasn’t going to,” Dylan admitted, before going back to cramming his stuff in a duffel bag.
Perhaps the one thing they could all agree on was, it was always a good day when you got to leave the hospital early.
HOLDEN was woken up by a boisterous male voice shouting, “Come on, get—” It petered out as Holden raised his head groggily and saw what appeared to be some kind of seven-foot hulking menace in the doorway. Then his eyes adjusted to the early morning half-light and the slightly unfamiliar room, and he saw it was Grey, in a black, sleeveless Under Armour shirt, loose red jogging shorts, and some kind of needlessly fancy sneakers. Grey looked a little surprised, but not as much as you would expect. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t know he had company.”
Holden glanced over his shoulder and confirmed the sleeping lump beside him was Scott. Oh, right. This was Scott’s room, wasn’t it? It took him a moment to remember. “What time is it anyways?”
“Seven. Was gonna drag him out for a jog.”
He looked over at the sleeping lump of Scott, who had yet to move a single iota under the pale blue blanket. “Should we check for a pulse?”
“Nah, he’s always like that. Usually I hafta shove him outta bed to wake him up. He could sleep through the apocalypse. There’s one story, that he always denies, that he fell asleep sitting at the end of the bench during a game. And nobody knew he was asleep until the back-up goalie heard him snoring.”
Holden sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It was always disorienting to sleep at someone else’s place, not to mention dealing with roommates. But Grey honestly didn’t seem to care he’d caught Scott in bed with a man. “Well, if you’re asking me, I don’t jog. It makes the ice fly out of my gin.”
Grey smirked at that. “I only harass teammates. Unless you’ve joined the Falcons, you’re excused.”
“Awesome.”
“Since I’m gonna jog alone, maybe I’ll have some eggs first. Want some eggs?”
This wasn’t right at all. No straight guy was this cool. “If you’re offering.”
Grey nodded and walked off. “Mind fried? They’re usually the easiest to make….”
“Whatever,” Holden replied, raising his voice so Grey could hear him. He felt like he’d woken up in bizarroland. Was a straight jock really going to make him breakfast?
Suddenly, there was a quiet mutter. “Is he gone?”
Holden gave Scott’s shoulder a shove. “Asshole. Playing possum like that.”
“But I’m really good at it.” He peeked out from beneath the blanket, eyes barely open, hair seriously mussed and sticking up at all angles. It was comical and fucking adorable at the same time. It made Holden kind of hate him, mainly because he had to work hard to get that kind of “accidental” hotness. “He usually wakes me up. I just don’t acknowledge him until I hafta.”
“Has he ever walked in to find a guy in your bed?”
“No. I told ya, I never bring guys home.”
“So why is he so cool about it?”
Scott settled his head deeper into his pillow, closing his eyes. He’d never been fully awake anyway; his voice was a gravelly mumble. “That’s Grey. Nothing gets to him. He’d be the perfect action movie guy ’cause you could wave a gun in his face and he wouldn’t even blink.”
“This is the same guy who raises hell on the ice?”
“That’s his job,” Scott muttered into his pillow.
He was damn good at it. He seemed like a different person. Holden slapped Scott on his tight little ass and asked, “You getting up?”
“Fuck no,” he mumbled. “He’ll make me jog.”
“Mind if I borrow some clothes?” Otherwise he’d have to run across the hall to the bathroom naked, and Grey probably wouldn’t be down with that. Holden knew he wouldn’t be if it was a naked woman. Scott had already given him sweats, but he’d left them in the bathroom.
“Go nuts,” he mumbled.
Holden got up, sliding out of bed and stretching languidly. This was still very weird, and he would never get used to it… except he realized he could get used to it.
Great. Now he knew what scared him the most.
DYLAN was tired and wanted Roan to take it easy and rest, just like he would if he was at the hospital. In fact, that was the agreement—Dylan would support him coming home if he actually took it easy.
The problem with that was, he wasn’t tired. If you considered a coma sleeping, he’d been sleeping for too fucking long as it was, and he was strangely restless. But he feigned exhaustion for Dylan’s sake and didn’t move until he was sure Dylan was sleeping. Then Roan slipped carefully out of bed, making sure he didn’t wake Dylan up, and went to use the downstairs bathroom to get dressed. He looked at himself in the mirror, with his new aerodynamic haircut and the ghost of a thin surgery scar barely visible at his hairline, over his left ear. He thought his eyes looked bigger, starker, but it was just the lack of hair that made his face look gaunt. A partial transformation might be good for him; he’d grow his hair back out.
Wow. Changing just to grow his hair back? How gay was he?
He checked his phone messages to find a lot of people didn’t bother calling. Well, he was unconscious, and no one was sure if he was going to live, so why leave a message? Fiona had, though. She said if he regained consciousness any time before 2014, he should call her back as she had something he might want to see.
Roan called her back, aware it was early but still hoping she was up, and she answered right away. She wasn’t just up, she was wired, like she’d been up all night, and he imagined that was the case. Once they got over all the “you came out of a coma and walked out of the hospital?” part, Fi cut to the chase. She told him Rainbow had come to see her about the new guy at Divine Transformation. (Holy shit, Bolt was dead?) It had taken her all night, but she had finally cracked the site and thought he might want to see this. He agreed and said he’d be right over.
On the drive to Fiona’s, he stopped and picked up a couple of breakfast sandwiches, one for him and one for her, and also got a couple of teas. (Fiona didn’t need any more caffeine).
When he arrived, she answered the door in sweats and a Seattle Falcons T-shirt, looking crazed. Her red hair, although held back in a ponytail, was messy, and dark circles ringed her eyes like the crescents of fresh bruises. Her sweat had a metallic smell, the caffeine leeching from her bloodstream, and for a moment she just stared at him. “Wow, you have hair,” she said. “Last time I saw you, your head was shaved.”
“I’m a lion. We don’t stay bald for long.” He handed her the paper bag containing the sandwich and the paper cup holding the tea. “So what have you uncovered?”
“Well, it’s nice to know you’re still in the ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’ mode,” she replied, turning away and walking inside. He followed, closing the door once he was inside.
“I think you’ll discover no ma’am ever came into it.”
“You know what I mean, smartass,” she replied, sitting in the desk chair before her computer, putting the food down. There was a Tupperware container on her desk, and she reached in and scooped up a small handful of what he initially took to be chocolate-covered peanuts, although they didn’t smell right. In fact, they were chocolate-covered espresso beans, and after she threw a couple in her mouth, she opened her hand to him and said, “Want some? They’re good.”
“I can’t chew coffee beans.”
“Why? Make you too edgy?”
“The taste is too bitter for my taste buds. Triggers my gag reflex. There isn’t enough chocolate to stop it.”
She stared at him a moment, as if trying to figure out if he was serious or not. “Is this related to your super-smelling thing?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, should’ve guessed.” And just like that, she turned back to her computer screen, dumping the uneaten beans back in the plastic container.
“So what did you discover? We got ourselves a kitty fight club?” He stepped behind her chair and looked over her shoulder as she called it up.
What came up on the screen was a black page with several video windows and what looked like some kind of chart. The writing was too small for him to read from here, but he didn’t have to, as she was happy to fill him in. “Yeah, it’s a kitty fight club, but it’s also worse than that.”
“They sell the videos? Cat snuff?”
She nodded, making her sloppy ponytail bounce and hit him. “Yeah, but you’re still not at the worst part.” She clicked on that one chart he could see, and it magnified, popping up bigger in its own separate window. “It’s a gambling operation.”
“What?” But now that he could see the chart, he could see for himself. Fights were listed by type of cat and advantage (such as a “male panther, 185 pounds, six foot seven inches versus a “male leopard, 243 pounds, six foot”) and approximate dates of fights, with some caveats being listed at the bottom. “Due to the unpredictability of viral cycles and availability of fighters, all times and matches are approximate, and betting may be halted at any time.” There were five different matches listed for the next ten days, although no dates were given for the fights themselves; they were just supposed to be taking place sometime this week. “Motherfucker. Any clues in the videos as to where the fights are taking place?”
“From what I can tell, they’re taking place indoors in something that looks like an empty pool, some kinda deep but slippery pit where the cats can’t get to the human spectators.”
“Human spectators?” This was getting better and better.
“Yeah. You never really see ’em, or at least I haven’t, but you can hear ’em in the background. The videos are poorly shot anyways. If you shell out thirty bucks for this kinda feed, though, you deserve to get ripped off.”
Unbelievable. It was bad enough that the normals were exploiting the infected, but now the infected were helping them? Jesus. He didn’t know why he was surprised; it had happened before, and it would happen again. “Have you checked property records, seen if Campanelli had anything that might contain something like this?”
“He owns a condo in Magnolia, kind of a ritzy place, and there’s no fucking way that’s happening there. I haven’t turned up any secondary properties. He’s not rich.”
“Yeah, that would have been too easy.” Roan rubbed his eyes, which felt dry from staring at the screen, and asked, “Rainbow had no idea of location?”
“Just up in the mountains. Considering we live within the Cascade Range, that doesn’t narrow it down.”
“No it doesn’t.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched up a familiar number. Holden answered his cell by the third ring.
“Dylan?”
“No, Roan.”
“Fuck you! He’s in a coma, playing road kill.”
Roan scowled at the phone, for all the good it would do him. “Are you done?”
“Hardly. You’re a passive-aggressive son of a bitch sometimes, you know that? You’re torturing poor Dylan, who’s really not cut out for this.” He paused and held the phone away as he said to someone in the background, “Grey, you wanna say anything to Roan?”
Grey? As in Grey Williams? Roan got his answer when he heard the laconic, deep-voiced defenseman say, “Yeah. Hope he’s better. The guys chipped in and bought him a get well present, but he’s gonna have to show up to get it.”
“Dude, I’m verbally bitch slapping him. Don’t be supportive.”
“I ain’t bitch slapping him. I’m attached to my arm, I need it.”
Holden sighed impatiently. “He can’t reach over the phone and rip your limbs off. Aren’t you supposed to be a butch guy who’s not afraid of anything?”
“I’m very butch,” Grey replied. “But I’m not stupid.”
Roan grimaced, trying not to laugh. He had no idea why Holden and Grey were in the same room, but he was glad he was an ear witness, as few people could get the verbal upper hand on Holden. Who knew Grey would be the one to do it? “You’ve really done a number on these guys,” Holden accused, getting back on the phone.
“I haven’t done anything, I’ve been road kill in a hospital for a week.”
“I’m hanging up on you.”
“Fine.” He told Holden what Campanelli was up to, and how he was seriously lacking some basic information. “I need an inside man in the church. I can’t do it, but you haven’t burned too many bridges there, have you?”
“Not to my knowledge. You want me there now, I take it?”
“As soon as possible would be for the best.”
Holden sighed, once more the most put upon person in the universe. “Fine. As soon as I finish breakfast, I’ll change and get out there.”
“Do I need to tell you to be careful?”
“No. But if I need back up, I can call Grey.” He moved the phone aside and asked, “I can call you, Grey?”
In the small silence that followed, Roan heard the scrape of a fork on a plate. They were having breakfast together? Suddenly he remembered the scent of Scott at Holden’s place and realized Scott was at his apartment. Holy shit, had Holden gotten himself a boyfriend? Laconically as always, Grey answered, “Sure.”
“See? I’ll be fine.”
Just because he couldn’t resist, Roan let a moment pass, then asked, “So when’s the engagement?”
“Go fuck yourself with a linoleum knife,” Holden snapped and hung up. Roan almost laughed. He actually found it sweet—and inexplicable—that Holden had a boyfriend, even though he still couldn’t wrap his head around it being Scott. Oh well, life was strange, and no one knew that better than him.
Fiona was looking up at him with her wide, caffeine-jazzed eyes, and he was afraid her heart was going to explode any minute. “You just got out of the hospital. Should you be working a case right now?”
It was already too late to ask.