Prey (47 page)

He followed the voices to the dead side of the building, the one where an entire wing of the hospital had been shut down for refurbishing, so there were no lights at all. The lot wrapped around this side and went around to the back, but had been cordoned off with sawhorses as some paltry attempt was made to fill potholes large enough to swallow a Honda.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw a guy built like a refrigerator leaning against the dead wing… only no, he wasn’t. Matt was sandwiched between him and the wall, the guy’s left arm lying flat against Matt’s chest as he held something up against the base of his throat. It was hard to see, since the blade was as dark as a KA-BAR, but it was a large, wicked-looking hunting knife, the kind that could gut a deer with little trouble, and he was pressing it so firmly into Matt’s throat he could see a shine of wetness that indicated the skin had been broken. It was a shallow slice, but only for now—one quick tug or a single deep push, and Matt’s blood would either be spurting like a fire hose or his head would hit the ground independent of his body. Roan considered sniping the guy, just putting a round in him from this angle, but there was almost no way he could take down Rambo—Sam; Rambo was just too silly, even if it was apt—without potentially killing Matt as well. It would have been better if Sam was threatening him with a gun; a shot to paralyze would have kept him from being able to pull the trigger.

He got the sense that someone was trying to sneak up on him—this would be Leonard, yes?—and Roan decided to let it happen. He needed to get closer to Sam to disarm him safely. He felt something hard poke into his spine, as a voice snarled in his ear, “Make a move, make a sound, and you’re dead.”

He’d actually put his gun flush against his back? What an amateur move. Had he actually ever held a gun, or did he only know of them from Tarantino films? Moron. “One word for you tough guy: Altoids. What have you been doing, eating roadkill?” His breath was pretty bad; Roan thought he smelled rot, and figured it was his teeth. Heavy meth and crack usage was not friendly to teeth or your appearance in general. The harsh chemicals ate away your teeth, making them crumble like old drywall, while it pitted your face like the surface of the moon. After a while, you could tell the habitual users on sight alone.

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“Shut the fuck up,” Leonard snarled, as he frisked Roan roughly and inexpertly with one hand, the other continuing to press the gun into his back. (This idiot would be easy to disarm.) This was a bit of a stretch for old Leonard, as he was a couple inches shorter than him and apparently didn’t have much of a reach, but after doing something that seemed like copping a feel, he found his SIG Sauer and pulled it. “Plannin’ on shootin’

us?”

“Only if you asked nicely.”

He shoved him violently, making him stumble forward. If he’d wanted to disarm him, he could have now, but it was still too soon.

Leonard smelled faintly of blood, and just a bit of cordite. Even though he was the driver, he was the one who took the bullet yesterday, wasn’t he?

The bullet missed Sam but hit Leonard, and because he couldn’t go to the hospital about it, the wound was still open. Not fatal, but give it time.

“Move it, funny man,” he growled unnecessarily, then added with a shout,

“Sam, look what we got here.”

Sam looked their way, not letting up pressure on Matt. Matt had clearly been angry, which was good because that was often more useful than fear, but when he saw Roan panic flashed through his eyes, along with what could have been an apology. Roan tried to reassure him with his eyes, let him know that this was all part of his plan, but he didn’t know if he got that.

Sam stared at him appraisingly as Leonard frog-marched him closer—again, an idiot move; these guys were not rocket scientists—and Roan got a good look at his shooter. He was a muscle head, one of those obsessive weightlifter types who’d long ago crossed the line from toned to grotesque, which also meant he could be a ’roid rager. Terrific. His head was block-shaped, his scalp shaved clean, his eyes glittery black dots like chips of polished onyx. In spite of his unnaturally carved body, there was something doughy about his face, which was pitted with both acne scars and the kind of pits that ate into the face of heavy meth users, making his cheeks look like they were starting to collapse in. “How the fuck are you up and around?” Sam demanded, his voice sounding scratchy. Had he smoked up recently? Maybe; Roan swore he could smell the sour chemicals of crack exuding through his pores. “I shot you.”

“Badly. You can’t shoot for shit, can you, Sam?” Yes, he was provoking him. If Sam turned his anger away from Matt and on to him, he could end this charade.

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Sam’s expression sharpened, moving from crazed to crazed and contemptuous. “I can cut real well. Wanna see?” He increased the pressure on the knife, and Matt leaned his head back as far as he could, as if trying to avoid the blade.

“Afraid to pick on someone your own size? I guess I should have figured that.”

That made Sam glare at him. “What, you mean you?” He snickered, although there was no actual humor in it. “You overestimate yourself, string bean.”

Sam was easily twice his weight and half a foot taller than him, and yet Roan had no doubt he could kick his muscled ass. He just had to get him to move that knife off Matt’s throat. “You’re a pussy, Sam. You can’t even face me to kill me. But then again, I bet you lost your balls long ago, huh? Shrunk ’em to the size of raisins. You really should have quit the

’roids while you still had your dick.”

That was it. Insult a man’s dick, and you plucked a nerve that was hard to ignore. Sam continued to glower at him, and Leonard jabbed the gun barrel in his back and snapped, “Shut the fuck up!” Matt seemed to be sending a “
Don’t!
”
look to him, but Roan ignored it in exchange for locking eyes with Sam.

Sam finally embraced the challenge. “Oh, you think so, huh?” He moved, taking the knife away from Matt’s throat and grabbing him by his hair before slamming his head back into the wall and dropping him to the asphalt. Matt was still conscious, but dazed. “Let’s—”

Roan didn’t wait for him to finish his threat. He spun, ripping the Glock out of Leonard’s hands as he turned and smashing a flattened palm into Leonard’s eagle-beak nose, shattering it, his warm blood spurting over Roan’s hand. “Fuck!” Leonard screamed, staggering back and grabbing his bleeding nose.

Sam had screamed as he lunged, so Roan knew Sam had launched himself at him, probably knife first. He spun aside and Sam sailed past him, coming to a quick stop and turning as Roan raised the weapon and fired, blasting a hole in Sam’s chest. He seemed to waver for a moment, looking down and seeing the blood that was now spreading out all over his skintight gray tank top, and Roan figured he might have nicked a lung. He didn’t get the heart, although God knows he had reason for a kill.

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Sam then looked at him in disbelief. “You fucker,” he spat, and threw his knife at him.

It wasn’t a throwing knife, but Sam actually threw it quite well, and it had a chance of actually hitting and doing some damage, except Roan turned aside and let it fly past harmlessly. But it was then Sam moved, much faster than you’d think a guy his size could, and wrapped an arm as thick as an average man’s leg around his throat from behind. “You dirty cocksucker,” he snarled, his breath redolent of something akin to ammonia. Roan felt Sam’s blood soaking though his coat.

Sam started to squeeze off his air supply, and Roan put the Glock point-blank against Sam’s meaty thigh and pulled the trigger, only to feel the gun pull hard, like something had clogged the firing mechanism.

Nothing had, it was simply the gun had picked an excellent time to jam.

Motherfucker.

He let the rage come, wash over him, as he threw his head back hard and caught Sam in the bridge of his nose. He kept slamming his head back, ignoring the pain, as he broke his nose and continued to drive the cartilage shards deeper into his head, the blood running warm down the back of Roan’s neck. In spite of it being poisoned with drugs, his blood smelled oddly good.

Sam punched him in the kidneys, hits that seemed to numb him from the waist down—or would have, if his muscles didn’t knot and release, a strange kind of warmth infusing him as adrenaline flooded his body and every sight and every smell became acutely sharp, almost painfully so.

Sam shoved him away, but Roan turned instantly with a growl deep in his throat and punched Sam in the neck, hard enough to nearly crush his larynx.

It wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to grab his throat and rip it out in one big chunk, feel the hot blood pour down his own throat as he ground the flesh beneath his teeth …

In spite of the drugs artificially propping him up, you needed to breathe to keep going, and Sam couldn’t. He started choking, bending over at the waist and grabbing his throat as he struggled to catch a breath, He sensed Leonard’s attack coming, the clumsy charge to come to the aid of his friend, and while Roan, slightly detached from himself, found it amusing, the beast in him didn’t. He spun with a roar and met Leonard’s charge with his own, catching the scrawny man in a tackle and Infected: Prey

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throwing him to the ground hard enough to break something in him with a crack like a snapping twig. He stared down into the man’s rodentlike face, growling, feeling the muscles in his face twitch and jump as if anxious to get out, and the smell of fear coming from Leonard was as sour and pungent as piss—perhaps it
was
piss. His pale blue eyes were wide with abject horror as he stared up at Roan, mouth agape as if frozen in a scream, blood from his ruined nose streaming down his face. Leonard’s mouth eventually started to work as if he was trying to say something, but nothing came out but a series of ineffectual squeaks. Roan heard a noise like the rumble of a jet engine, and realized his own growling had filled his head like a curse. He saw his hand was gripping the top of Leonard’s head, tangled in his greasy mop of black hair, and he was thinking idly how easy it would be to twist his head off, just rip it away clean. His blood smelled much better than Sam’s, less toxic, as if his flesh was slightly less poisoned, no matter the state of his teeth.

There was a noise near the cordon, and two separate beams of light stabbed toward them. “Police! Nobody fucking move!” Sikorski’s familiar voice shouted, and Roan squinted at the bright lights, smelling the flesh of two clean people, and wondering which one he should take out first.

What?!

It was hard to come back to himself—in fact, it was almost fucking impossible. The beast was out and didn’t want to go back in. It wanted to feed; it wanted to rend flesh from bones and make everyone who made it hurt pay. And the worst part was Roan kind of wanted the beast to do it; he was almost inclined to let go.

Gordo and Seb lowered their flashlights, but he could still see with crystal clarity, and the shock on their faces told him they had seen something on his face that they wished they hadn’t. “Roan, are—are you okay?” Gordo asked, trying to hide the surprise in his voice and failing miserably.

What had they seen? He almost didn’t want to know. He made to speak, but then suddenly realized he was still growling. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force the beast back inside its cage. It didn’t want to go, and Roan wasn’t sure he wasn’t shoving some part of himself back in with it. When he opened his eyes, he was sure he was back inside himself; the pain in his kidneys was proof of that. He’d probably be pissing blood for the next couple of days. “I’m fine,” he finally said.

“Where the fuck have you guys been?”

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“We got cornered by the desk sergeant on the way out,” Gordo said, trying hard to sound normal, but there was a thread of tension in his voice that couldn’t be covered.

Roan got up off Leonard, who instantly shoved himself backward down the pavement as if trying to reach the cops before Roan could change his mind and rip his head off. He was making unintelligible noises, and it was now obvious he
had
pissed himself in fear.

Looking at him and Sam, who was now on all fours, still choking and hacking loudly, trying very hard to catch a breath, Seb commented dryly, “At least we’re right next to the hospital.” But even as cool as Seb was, he wasn’t looking him in the eye.

He turned to see how Matt was; while he had a long but shallow cut across his throat, a much shorter and deeper cut down his left cheek, and his right eye was swelling, he looked relatively okay. Only he was staring at Roan in wide-eyed shock, and he seemed to want to say something, but couldn’t yet muster up the ability.

What had they seen? Holy Christ, how close had the lion come to getting out?

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12

The Thinnest Line

ROAN deliberately avoided everyone as he ducked into one of County General’s bathrooms to clean off the blood. Gordo asked him if he needed to be checked out, but he assured him none of the blood was his. He didn’t seem surprised by that.

He stared at himself in the plastic mirror over the sink, hoping that he could see a shadow of what the others had seen. He stared deep into his own eyes, until he could see the thin, erose line of gold around his pupils, the only place where the green of his iris gave way, and he tried to see the lion lurking there behind them. He couldn’t see anything but himself, of course, but at what point was the separation? Was there one? He was beginning to think that it was a convenient excuse in his own mind, that there was no such thing as his desires and the beast’s desires—they were all one thing, and he only created the separation in his own head because it made him feel better.

He did the best he could washing the blood off his neck and out of his hair even though he couldn’t see it; he could feel it, though, smell it, saw the water in the sink turn pinkish-red as he poured water over it. At one point a reasonably attractive Asian resident came into the men’s room, and when he was at an adjoining sink, washing his hands, he showed him the back of his neck and asked, “Did I get all the blood off?”