by Andrea Speed
The emergency room was madness, as it usually was, but it was the sheer number of cops that drew Dylan in the right direction, and while a cop stepped in his way to stop him, a big arm shoved the cop aside like he was a cardboard stand-up, and said, “He’s the fucking husband, okay? Jesus.” It was Grey, who had half a foot and seventy pounds of muscle on the hapless cop, who could do nothing but stand aside and watch as Grey escorted Dylan through the mob. He had to admit, in situations like this, it was good Roan had weird hockey player friends. Grey was a mountain, and even if you were as tall or muscular as he was, he clearly had lots of confidence in his innate ability to kick your ass. It was clear some of the cops wanted to say something, maybe stop him, but nobody dared.
Grey escorted him to a side room, a private waiting room, where everyone seemed to be gathered: Fiona, Dee, a bloodied Scott, a frazzled-looking Jeff, and a coffee-drinking Shep, Dee’s EMT partner. Dee stood as soon as he saw it was Dylan, but Dylan just went ahead and asked, “What the fuck happened? Where is he? Can I see him?”
Dee assumed his calm paramedic demeanor that seemed to get more placid the worse the situation was. Right now, he seemed ice cold. “No, he’s in surgery right now. He was shot in the chest and the leg, but the leg caused the critical injury.”
“Yeah, that was funny,” Shep said, his Southern drawl barely noticeable. “The chest wound was like nothin’. Usually chest wounds are real messes, but it may as well have been a paper cut.”
Dee went on like he hadn’t been interrupted. “His femoral artery was hit. He easily lost half his blood volume by the time we got to the scene.”
Dylan just let the words wash over him, not really thinking about any of it. If he did, he would break down, and he didn’t want to do that in front of so many people.
“I know this sounds bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been. I found the artery and was able to pinch it off, although I guess hockey boy over there deserves some credit,” Dee said, gesturing at Scott. “He put a tourniquet on his leg, slowed the bleeding down, bought him some time.”
Scott simply shrugged, but the frazzled Jeff said, “And may have been infected for it! Jesus man, what were you fuckin’ thinkin’?”
“I was thinking of saving his fucking life, Jeff, and I’m not infected,” Scott insisted, giving him a harsh look. “Testing’s just a precaution. I’m fine.” Dylan knew the look in Scott’s eyes. He was trying defiantly not to feel anything so he couldn’t lose it, and that was exactly what Dylan was doing right now. His heart suddenly went out to the bi closet case—Scott was trying so hard to fit into a world that was far from friendly to his kind, and he was doing surprisingly well. It took a kind of courage to remain numb when what you really wanted to do was freak the hell out.
Dylan looked at Dee, keeping his own nonfreak-out mask in place. “He’s going to be okay though, right?”
Dee grimaced. “I’m sure he’ll get through surgery fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Dee gave him a hard scowl. “What, did Ro give you a handbook on me? Fine—after a great deal of blood loss, it’s not unusual for the internal organs to just shut down. Sudden, massive blood loss is just an incredible shock to the system, and many people don’t survive it.”
Dylan nodded, feeling that pit open up in his stomach. If he allowed himself to feel something, he would probably be barfing his guts out by now.
“Now Ro has an edge on most people, in that his body undergoes a terrible shock on a monthly—fuck, daily at this rate—basis, a shock many don’t survive. So if he can survive that, he has a decent chance of surviving this. We’ll know within the next twelve hours if he will or won’t.”
Oh, terrific. He had twelve hours to go insane with anxiety. “His transformations don’t involve his organs shutting down.”
“True, which is why there’s some doubt. But his odds are still better than average.”
“Ah.” There was an empty chair, and Dylan sat down in it before he collapsed. “What’s with all the cops?”
Grey scoffed. “That’s what I was wonderin’ too.”
Suddenly Holden charged into the waiting room, nearly breathless. “Okay, who did this? Give me a name.” His hair was well coiffed, and he was wearing the hustler “uniform” of a tight white T-shirt and slightly baggy but well-worn and attractive jeans, suggesting he’d just come from an assignation.
They all looked at him in various expressions of surprise, but Dee was the first to recover. “It was a cop.”
Holden nodded curtly. “I know. Give me a name.”
Dee raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck are you now, a hooker vigilante?”
Jeff looked confused. “Is that a reference I don’t get?”
Holden didn’t react to anything anyone said. “Given enough time, I can get to anyone. Give me a name.”
Dee looked skeptical, but after the other night, Dylan had no problem believing this. Holden was a predator who disguised himself as prey, acting like a victim until it suited him not to be. He wasn’t a psychopath, but he was two steps and one mental shift away from it. He would never have believed that a hooker could be muscle, but Holden had taught him otherwise. Dylan wondered what possible story he could have lived that led him to be this way, but decided he was better off not knowing.
“The cops take care of their own. Let them punish him. Besides, what would you do? And better yet, why?” Dee said.
“That’s just street one oh one, Dee. They hurt one of yours, you hurt one of theirs. Haven’t you ever seen The Wire?”
“Okay, I get that reference,” Jeff said.
Dee looked skeptical, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you have delusions of grandeur, or is there something we don’t know about you?”
“I don’t think the cops will do anything to the guy,” Grey said.
Dee gave him a sharp look. “Don’t you fuel the fire, Hanson brother.”
“I got that reference too,” Jeff commented to no one.
Grey sat back and glared at Dee. “He’s lyin’ already. I heard that cop say he shot Roan because he thought he was lungin’ toward him, but that’s not what he said to me after I told him he shot a cop. He said to me, ‘He didn’t look Human.’ He shot him ’cause he was scared he just met the boogeyman. Can’t we nail him on a hate crime?”
Jeff looked confused. “He didn’t shoot him ’cause he was gay.”
Grey turned his scathing look on Jeff. “He shot him ’cause he was infected, Jeff. Jesus.”
“Will you make a statement to that effect?” Detective Murphy said, coming in the room. Clearly she was still on the job, as she was wearing a dark suit and button-down white shirt that looked like it might have been a man’s (but she wore it well), her badge and service weapon visible on her belt. “I mean about what he said, not the hate crime charge.”
“Yeah. I’m still gonna make that hate crime charge.”
“Don’t. You could make things worse, and we don’t need that right now.”
“Make things worse how?” Holden asked, eying her like she might be a rabid cobra. “Roan is half dead, and he was shot by one of your guys.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. Maybe Holden was right to be wary of her. “He wasn’t one of mine. Yeah, he’s a cop, and when I meet him, I’m gonna kick his ass.” She looked at Grey. “But if he said something to you that he isn’t telling us, we need to know. Make it official. As for why the cops are here, we’re expecting trouble once the news gets out.”
Now it was Dee’s turn to look confused. “Why?”
“There’s some fear that groups of infected may turn violent, with this right after the Church bombing. It might be seen as one incident too many against the Church and against all infecteds.”
“I’m pretty sure the church supporters hate Ro’s guts,” Dee said.
“He’s a symbol,” Dylan said, knowing how the cops were seeing this. “Many of the Church’s people don’t like him, but he’s
the most high-profile infected you could name. He’s carved a life for himself among mainstream society, he’s refused to stay in a cage, so no matter how much they dislike him, he’s all they’ve got. If the cops decided to kill him—and I’m not saying they did, I’m just saying that some infecteds will see it that way—they’ll be pretty pissed off.”
Murphy nodded. “Exactly.” She turned her gaze on Grey. “So… who are you again?”
“Grey Williams.”
Murphy carried on smoothly, as if she hadn’t had to ask. “Grey, if you go off with the hate crimes charge, you could just inflame things. So please don’t.”
“Infecteds rioting like it’s 1968 doesn’t explain the thick blue line in the lobby,” Holden said, and Jeff made a noise like a cough as he swallowed a snicker.
Dylan thought it was interesting that Murphy and Holden seemed to take an instinctive dislike to each other. They were sizing each other up like boxers in a ring. Obviously she was a cop, but did she know he was a hooker? Her expression was professionally stony, and gave nothing away. “I suggested to the Chief that she station guys here, ’cause once word gets out that Roan’s here, it isn’t just infecteds who will get a full head of steam. Roan has enemies, and he’s never been more vulnerable than he is now, and just think what a hero among the scumbags you’ll be if you successfully take out McKichan.”
Even Holden couldn’t make a smartassed comment about that, because she was right and they all knew it. If one of those fuckheads who’d always wanted to kill him wanted to do it, now was the time. If the cop hadn’t killed him, the assholes would.
Dylan covered his face by pretending to dry wash it, but grief finally overwhelmed him, and his resolve cracked. A few tears leaked out as he tried to hold them back, then he just gave up, as he knew it was a fight he couldn’t win.
Poor Roan. He deserved better than this. But the tragedy of life was you rarely got what you deserved, you only got more heartache.
22
Last Dance
DYLAN wanted to be left alone, curled up in his own private bubble of pain, so Dee left him be. When he got the heads up Roan was out of surgery, he’d take Dylan to see him, and he’d probably be in more of a mood to open up then.
Dee found himself sitting next to jock boy, Scott, the hockey player Ro had inexplicably befriended. Well, maybe not so inexplicably—he had a hell of a profile, a long-lashed boy with delicate features that could have been pretty if it weren’t for his strong jaw and a few pale scars that gave him a more rugged appearance. He was a little flushed, but that was typical of the heavy antiviral Dee gave him at the scene. There was an emergency antiviral you could give in case of suspected exposure to the cat virus, but you needed to give it within twenty minutes of exposure, and even then, its efficacy was in question. But it was better than nothing, at least in theory, and if Scott wasn’t infected, the massive dose wasn’t going to hurt him. Oh, he might get a mighty case of diarrhea later, but nothing that would kill him.
“You feeling okay?” Dee asked Scott. Dee found himself wondering how young Scott was. Maybe twenty? Twenty-one? Suddenly Dee felt monstrously old and realized he was closer to forty than this kid was to thirty. Wow, just another depressing fact to throw on tonight’s pile.
The boy, who was just Roan’s type, nodded. “Feel a little hot, but I’m okay.” To be brutally honest, he was kind of Dee’s type too, or at least cute enough that he was willing to pretend he was.
“Expected side effect. It’ll pass.”
He nodded again, remaining good natured, more Canadian than jock, at least for this moment. Scott looked at Dylan, and said, “I wish I could say something to him that would help. I don’t know what to say.”
“For now, I think it’s best to leave him be.” After a brief pause, Dee decided to distract him. “Where’d you learn to make a tourniquet like that?”
“I spent a winter break working with my uncle, who was a ski instructor at a place up in the Canadian Rockies. All us trainees were taught basic first aid, in case someone got hurt on the mountain. It might’ve been a while before the rescue teams could get there.”
“Ah, good. Ever hafta use it? Besides tonight, of course.”
“Not really. Well, once, I had to make a splint for somebody, but that was it. You know, ski resorts are not the wild sex parties certain teen comedies would have you believe.”
“No, really? Senior Ski Trip lied to me? The bastards.”
That got a brief, pained smile out of Scott. “I know, I felt cheated too.”
They heard what sounded like a loud argument out in the lobby, and with the smallest of annoyed grunts, Grey—whom Dee couldn’t help but think of as Mongo, since he was about as big as an ox, and with all those scars on his face, if he hadn’t been a hockey player, he’d have been a serial murderer or world-class thug of some stripe—stood up and went to the entryway, where he stood like a human gate, either waiting for trouble or daring it to try and move him. Dee wished trouble loads of luck. Guy looked like he was built like a brick tackling dummy. He skated? When he was coming at you, it must have looked like a bus barreling toward you, not so much speedy as huge and unyielding, like a house thrown square at your face.
Scott called out, “Situation?”
“Some people causin’ trouble, the cops closin’ ranks,” Grey reported, sounding oddly stoic, as if he was reading from a preprinted menu. “I don’t think anyone’s gettin’ through, but I’ll keep an eye on things.”
“Intervene only if necessary,” Scott said, sounding like a weary general issuing knee-jerk orders. In fact, that’s exactly what was going on. “Let the cops handle this shit if they can.”
“Oh, you bet. Fucking bastards shot Roan.”
“It was just one. Don’t think they’re all the same.”
Very quietly, Dee whispered, “You his commanding officer?”
Again a faint, pained smile. Oh, Scott was a real cutey, completely fuckable. Roan really did have good taste in men. “I’m only team captain on the ice. But it’s habit, and he’s easygoing, so he doesn’t mind me being bossy.”
“He’s easygoing? Him?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, since he looks like he could beat us all to death with his shoe, but he really is. He generally saves his temper for the games.”
“Really?” Looking at Grey standing in the doorway, tensed up as if ready to start breaking walls down with his forehead, that was hard to believe. “I’d hate to see him pissed off.”
“Yeah, it’s frightening. That’s why he’s such an effective enforcer.” Scott paused in an uncomfortable way, staring at the distant wall without actually seeing it. “When Roan went after the cats… he was so fast. It was like that parkour shit, you know, running along those cars, only he wasn’t going up the side of a building. We’re in good shape, y’know, but we couldn’t keep up. We only caught up to him by the time the cop shot him.” The kid finally looked at him, and he seemed to be struggling to put his thoughts into words. “He’s not… that’s not the way infection works in most people, right? I mean… he’s more than Human. He really is a superhero, isn’t he? His face was changing after the shooting, it looked like his jaw was shrinking somehow… it was really weird.”
Oh, this was going to be difficult to handle. Thank you, Ro. “Look, Ro’s case is unique—”
“He’s magnificent,” Scott said, looking at him with something like awe. “I wish I was him.”
What the fuck? Weird. Even Roan was probably wishing he wasn’t himself right now. How weird was it some kid would want to be Roan? He better not tell him, because this was weird enough as it was.
Holden came back in, sipping a can of soda, and while he sat next to Dylan, he didn’t say anything or make a move, showing an odd amount of empathy. He was just staying close to him, to let him know he was there, but not imposing himself in any way. Holden was way too smart to be what he was, so Dee just assumed he was a slacker, or got a kind of thrill from living extraleg
ally. That made him a perfect match for Ro, who was both legal and illegal at the same time, straddling so many lines that it was impossible to say where he had crossed them in the first place.
Dee was just getting over his own weird feelings. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d slept with Ro in the past, seen him naked too many times to mention—no, nothing felt quite as grotesquely intimate as reaching inside his leg and pinching an artery shut. Roan’s life had literally been in his hands. All he had to do was let it go, open his fingers, and that was it. Roan would have thanked him if he could, would have asked him to let him die if he was conscious, but of course he wasn’t. Still, as they were in the back of the ambulance, Dee did consider it briefly, knowing that’s exactly what Ro would have wanted, but decided fuck him, Ro didn’t know what was best for himself half the time. Besides, Ro had never filled out an official “do not revive” form, and it wouldn’t have applied here anyways.
At least if Roan died, Dee could tell himself he had done everything he could to save him.
ROAN couldn’t believe how cold he was. His feet felt like they were carved out of ice. He pulled the sheets tightly around him, and said, “I blame you, you know. You picked this shitty hotel.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Paris replied, wrapping his big body around him, warming him. “Besides, isn’t it romantic to get this snuggly?”
“Slowly freezing to death isn’t romantic.”
“Depends on what you’re doing while freezing to death.” Paris kissed his ear, arms wrapped around his chest, and Paris said, not unkindly, “You know that’s not why you’re so cold.”
It took Roan a moment to figure out what he meant. Yes, it was this shitty Vancouver hotel, where the heating system seemed to break down the instant they checked in, and of course it was an unseasonably cold night tonight. All of this figured, as that’s how it worked.
