Roaring

by Lindsey Duga

  My chest and skin hummed with energy.

  Eris.

  I needed to get to her now.

  Glancing to each side, I estimated the location of the compartment I’d seen the man in the tweed jacket enter. Fighting the raging wind, I made my way to the second window from the end.

  Summoning both the human and inhuman strength I possessed, I hurled myself off the train. At the last moment, I grabbed the edge of the train’s roof before it was too late and, using my body’s momentum, thrust my legs, feet first, through the glass.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Siren

  I woke up unable to move my arms, my legs, or my jaw. Unable to move anything except my eyes. Judging from the ceiling I was staring at, we were still on the train, but was it the same train? How long had I been out?

  “Awake already?”

  A calm, sophisticated tenor, a tone of an educated man. Without even looking, I knew it was the man in the tweed jacket, the one who had pricked me with some odd stinger coming right out of his palm.

  “And I gave you a hefty dose of poison, too.”

  His face came into view as he leaned over me, giving me a cruel, taunting smile.

  My skin crawled, tingling with disgust as the man’s hand drew up my leg, his fingers fiddling with the hem of the maid’s uniform. I made a sound in the back of my throat—a cross between a whimper and a growl.

  With raised eyebrows, he withdrew a large handkerchief from his jacket. “Well, we can’t have you talking, now can we?” He pried my lips open and threaded the cloth through my mouth so my tongue pressed against the fabric. He finished it with a knot on the back of my head.

  “Your hunter seems to be looking for you. Lucky for us you managed to slip away so we needn’t have engaged in a brawl right in the middle of the train. Now my…er…colleague can just take him out quietly,” the academic said, patting my knee. “No one shall be the wiser.”

  The handkerchief in my mouth tasted like cologne. The thick scent gave me a terrible headache, and the poison from the stinger made my body sluggish and heavy.

  God, are you punishing me? Maybe I deserved whatever fate the BOI had in store for me.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of them finding Colt and killing him. And Colt wouldn’t go down without a fight. There would be nothing “quiet” about it—that much I knew. What if any of the other innocent passengers got hurt in whatever fight broke out?

  Colt was right. I was a danger to society. Not for what I’d do, but for what others could make me do, or what others would do to get to me.

  Tears swam in my eyes, but I suppressed them. I was good at that. It would be terrible to bawl while I was gagged, and completely unhelpful. I had to find a way to get rid of this paralyzing poison.

  But to my horror, the monster—for that was the only thing he could be—bent over and grabbed a length of rope, beginning to tie me up quickly and expertly.

  As he looped the rope around my ankles, I looked around the compartment, now just barely able to move my neck. Was there something I could use? It was pretty bare, except for the suitcase that I’d seen in the dining car resting against his chair. It lay on the bench across from me, and I could very clearly read the upside-down gold letters of BKH.

  I stared at the letters for a long time, thinking I might’ve seen that sequence before, in that typeface. But I couldn’t be sure. It played with a memory from so long ago.

  Jerked from my thoughts by rough fingers skimming down the side of my face, I looked back in horror to find the monster staring at me intently. There was a gleam in his eyes I’d seen many times from my nights in The Blind Dragon.

  It seemed those were the only words I ever uttered: stay away.

  Except now I couldn’t.

  I whimpered again, twisting my face away from his touch, and a shadow passed across his expression. At my movement, he held up his hand to show his bandage with the small amount of blood where his stinger had been. “Keep moving like that and I’ll sting you again.”

  Just then, a giant thud came from above. The both of us glanced up at the ceiling, following the heavy banging noises with our eyes, even though we couldn’t, of course, see through the metal.

  What is happening?

  The sounds stopped for a spell, while my pulse pounded harder than ever.

  Then the window exploded.

  Glass shattered, hitting the walls and raining down on my skin like tiny sharp pebbles. Heavy feet hit the carpet next to me and the monster backed up against the compartment door, his eyes wide with shock. I craned my neck back to catch a glimpse of Colt standing with one hand braced on the window frame, backlit against the morning sun. The wind whistled through like we were trapped in a tunnel.

  Colt took a step forward and his gaze homed in on his opponent, glass crunching under his shoes. At the sound, my captor seemed to snap out of it. He ripped off his bandage and thrust out his palm. The stinger emerged, breaking through bloody skin and shooting out tiny stingers like darts. Colt threw up an arm and blocked a few from his face, the little needles embedding into the bare skin of his arm.

  Colt then twisted back with his right hand like a pitcher and threw a large shard of glass like a throwing dagger. Distracted by the deadly sharp edges heading for him, the monster dropped his stinger hand and Colt lunged forward with a right cross to his face.

  Dead center.

  He went down, groaning in agony. Colt picked him up by the collar and held another shard in his hand, pressing it against the monster’s neck.

  “Tell me who sent you,” Colt growled.

  I twisted my hands again and again, the binding around them loosening. Maybe the monster had been too obsessed with other thoughts to do his job well. It also helped that the adrenaline pumping through me seemed to be overcoming the paralyzing poison. I could feel my aching muscles scream into consciousness.

  “Her creator,” the monster in the tweed jacket choked out under Colt’s tight hold.

  The strange term caught me off guard. My creator? How had someone created me?

  “I need a name, old man.” The muscles in Colt’s back tightened as his grip grew stronger.

  The monster just turned his head to the side, coughing.

  “Tell me!” Colt shook the monster again, this time so hard that his head banged against the door.

  I got the gag off, twisting and wrenching at the rope around my wrists until it had finally earned me freedom and a harsh rope burn. At last, I had some semblance of power. I could speak.

  “He’ll kill me,” he moaned.

  “I’ll kill you,” Colt growled, sounding like a feral beast.

  “Colt!”

  He turned at his name. Turned to look at me with wild, almost red eyes. Maybe I should’ve tried to use my voice on the monster who’d poisoned me—who had information about the people who were after me—but right now he wasn’t the one who was scaring me.

  I licked my lips and spoke words that I believed to be true. “You’re not a killer.”

  The magic in my voice permeated the air, thickening it with persuasion and conviction.

  Colt stared at me for a long moment, then wrenched his hands away. His gaze, clear and angry, made me sure that it was not my magic that had stopped him. What had?

  The monster slid down to the floor, gasping and wheezing. His wild gaze then focused on me. Absolute terror was there. Then, before either one of us could stop him, he pressed his stinger into his own neck. His eyes rolled back into his head and tiny bubbles frothed at the corner of his mouth.

  Another tense moment passed as Colt ran his hands through his hair and jerked his shirt collar straight, sending another spray of glass tinkling to the ground. He glared at me over his shoulder. “You don’t know what I am.”

  It was true. I didn’t. He was something, but what, I couldn’t h
ope to guess. Not yet. I knew nothing about him. Even what little traits I’d been able to glean at The Blind Dragon could be fake. All part of an act he’d been assigned to play.

  Even so…I didn’t think he wanted to be a killer.

  I said nothing as Colt crouched and checked the monster’s pulse. He shook his head and dropped his wrist. “Dead.”

  Shocked, I stared at the corpse on the floor. “He killed himself?” Had he been that scared of…of me? Of my power?

  Colt shrugged. “Many men choose death over being captured. That way they escape torture, and the possibility of giving up information to their enemies.”

  I was still replaying the man’s death over in my mind while Colt knelt before me and began untying the rest of my bindings.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’d rather not cut the rope. Might be useful later, and it’s not like the manticore needs it anymore.”

  “Is that what he was?”

  Colt just nodded.

  “Are you sure you want to untie me?” I muttered. I’d tried to escape him twice already.

  He froze, then lifted his gaze to me. “Are you going to run away again?”

  I glanced at the manticore, who’d seemingly been a nice gentleman trying to help me to my feet, but then turned out to have a stinger in his palm. I thought about the stabbed men on the platform, and the minotaur left at Dr. Boursaw’s office. Destruction and death followed me like a trail of gasoline. What would be the match that ignited everything in my wake?

  Colt was right. I needed to be brought in.

  I’d sacrificed my voice for seven years for the independence and integrity of others. Sacrificing my freedom for their safety did not seem like such a bad deal.

  Slowly, I shook my head. I wouldn’t try to run again.

  Colt held my gaze for another long moment, then he continued working on the ropes at my feet. Eventually, he got them unraveled and they slid off my ankles. I rubbed at the marks on my wrists. I was so tired of being bound.

  “There’s another one,” I suddenly remembered with a gasp. The manticore had mentioned his “colleague” going after Colt. I moved to get up, but Colt raised his hand to stop me.

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  Slowly, I lowered myself back on the seat. “Why? What happened to him?”

  Colt didn’t answer.

  You’re not a killer.

  You don’t know what I am.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Agent

  We left the dead manticore and headed back to our compartment. I took his briefcase with me, unsure whether or not anything useful would be in it. But I figured at this point, any clue could help. I also stole his hat. I’d lost mine back at the hotel when I was shot and moving around without one made me feel naked.

  True to her word, Eris did not try to escape. She sat by the window, still as a statue, and watched the world pass by.

  We didn’t say a word to each other, but inside, I was burning.

  Nothing could stop this incessant heat in my chest. This need to get rid of it. Every breath was difficult and I almost wanted her to try and run away again. It would give me something to do, something to chase, anything other than watch her sit there, resigned to a miserable, lonely fate. I tried to tell myself that the BOI would be the safest place for her, and for everyone, but I couldn’t help but remember her words: “Who’s to say that what they would make me do wouldn’t be just as monstrous?”

  Her words rang with a seed of truth. My own past with the BOI was proof enough.

  Still…

  I dug my knuckles into my temple and gritted my teeth. The old scars between my shoulder blades ached and I shifted in my seat to try to find a more comfortable position, even though I knew there wasn’t one.

  Since the beginning, nothing had sat right with this girl. Everything I’d come to learn about her was the exact opposite of what she was supposed to have been.

  “You’re not a killer.”

  The broken body on the Connecticut coastline said different.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Her soft voice pulled me out of my frustrations and I let loose a curse from under my breath.

  And then she kept asking me things like that.

  I lifted my head and met her eyes. It was the first time she looked at me since she’d asked what had happened to the other man—the one whose lifeless body lay miles and miles away.

  “Not remotely.” The words were out before I could take them back. I was finding it harder and harder to put on a show around this girl. To con and manipulate her like I’d done at The Blind Dragon, before I’d known her character.

  The character of a girl who tried to save a person who had kidnapped her—not just myself but the manticore as well.

  Christ, I was so confused.

  So wrapped up in my own head, I didn’t even notice she’d taken the seat next to me and was dabbing my cheek with a handkerchief. I leaned back, away from her gentle touch.

  She frowned. “A piece of glass cut your cheek. You’re bleeding.”

  Sure enough, my fingers came away red when I touched my face. It stung a little, but it didn’t hurt. The injury was so minor, the idea of tending to it made me almost laugh.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Then is it your shoulder? Did you open your stitches?”

  I thought back to my fight and the man’s heel digging into my wounded shoulder. “Probably,” I answered with a sigh.

  Her gaze dropped to my shirt collar and her fingers squeezed around the cloth. “Then we should check on it.”

  “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “It could get infected, Colt.”

  At my name, my gaze cut to her and I suddenly felt angry seeing her there with concern on her innocent face. Why was she so nice? So compliant and caring? I’d stolen her away. Taken her from her home. Forced her to leave everyone she loved and everything she cared for behind. She should feel angry…she should feel…disgust.

  It’s what I felt.

  All the time.

  “It’s not going to get infected,” I replied, each word gruffer than the last.

  “Oh, are you a doctor, too, then?” she said, placing one hand on her hip.

  I suddenly leaned in so that our faces were close enough for our breaths to mingle. “I told you before, you don’t know what I am.”

  Eris didn’t move away. Instead, her eyes searched mine.

  “I don’t have to know what you are to know what you’re not.”

  I’d never felt more disoriented. Even when I’d had seven straight shots of whiskey when McCarney took me out on my nineteenth birthday.

  I sighed. “Eris, I have to take you in. I don’t know what you’re doing to me…pretending to care, or saying what I…” My mouth was running wild. I shook my head. “But I have to. You’re too—”

  “Dangerous. I know.” Her gaze was directed at her lap and the handkerchief that was wrinkled to hell now, her shoulders hunched. “I have to… I’ve gotta hope that the government will be a better choice than whoever is sending all these monsters after me.”

  Ah. So that was it.

  I leaned my head back against the wall, closing my eyes, feeling the rattle of the train as it continued onward to Philadelphia.

  For the first time in a few years, I wished sleep would come easy to me. I’d grown used to stakeouts, to traveling all night, to staying awake while others slept, but all I wanted now was a way to quiet my mind. To slip into blissful ignorance.

  I’d used to dream of doing just that every night for four years after that day…

  “Colt?” Eris’s sweet voice asked.

  “It won’t get infected,” I croaked. “I swear.”

  I felt her get up from the seat next to me and heard her sit back down o
n the opposite bench.

  We rode in silence the rest of the way.

  The moment the train pulled into Philadelphia, I ushered Eris out of the compartment and down into the throng of passengers waiting to depart. She stuck close.

  It was what I’d wanted, right?

  Then why the hell did I feel like such shit?

  Gritting my teeth, I pushed my way through the crowds on the train platform, still holding the briefcase from the manticore. I’d noticed the letters BKH in gold on the edge, and recognized them immediately. They were the exact same letters inside the rim of the minotaur’s bowler hat. The briefcase had been locked, but I broke it easily and looked inside. There was nothing except academic papers.

  So he’d been a professor of some sort. But he’d been employed by someone else…who? What mob boss had their hands in a university?

  Any one of them I supposed. They had their connections to seemingly everyone and everything.

  Broad Street Station of Philadelphia wasn’t unlike the Boston depot with its crowds of people carting luggage and billows of smoke and train conductors yelling at the top of their lungs. Though the architecture was different with its gothic spires and arched windows, making the whole structure look more like a cathedral in Europe than a railway station in America.

  Despite its massive size, it felt too small for the amount of people it held.

  Without a word, I offered Eris my elbow, and she tucked her hand into the crook of it. Her fingers pressed into my arm through the fabric, and I felt the heat of her touch as much as the burn inside my chest and throat.

  I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose her again.

  “Where are we going?” Eris asked as we stepped off the curb, leaving the train depot behind and crossing the streets milling with people in the early evening hours.

  My stomach growled. Hell, I was hungry.

  Just across the street was a deli and my mouth watered, imagining the smoked meat, the vinegar tang of mustard, and thick bread garnished with sesame seeds.

  “Hungry?” I asked Eris.

  “Starving,” she answered.

  Together, we waited amidst the commuters at the streetlight, and at the signal we crossed. Upon entering the deli, Eris dropped my arm and raced to the counter, immediately examining the fresh cut meat on display.