Roaring

by Lindsey Duga

  “That doesn’t tell me shit.” I slammed the glass down on the bedside table. Water sloshed from the rim onto the wood.

  The nun didn’t even flinch. Only her smile faltered. “You want to know my connection to the monster trade I suppose.”

  “Obviously. And how you know what I am.” Eris wouldn’t have told her. She wasn’t like that.

  Sister Adaline leaned back, almost like she was settling into a big luxurious armchair. “The Catholic Church has been battling demons for a thousand years, Mr. Clemmons. Just because the demons take on different forms doesn’t mean our war has ever stopped.”

  For a long time, I stared at her. “You’re telling me that the Catholic Church hunts down monsters?”

  Her green eyes narrowed, the wrinkles around them becoming more pronounced and severe. “Not in the way you do, I’m sure. Not with guns or bombs, but with forgiveness, patience. Virtue. Violence breeds more violence. You of all people should know that.”

  My fingers curled around my bedsheets. “How do you know about me?”

  Her chin tilted downward and her jaw tightened in a way that showed intense disapproval. “We’d been aware of the monster trade for some time, but when the BOI came to us with their idea to fight monsters with monsters, a rift opened within our Order. Many in the church agreed with their tactics to put an end to the monsters being used by the mob, while others, including myself, argued against it. At the end of the day, we couldn’t stop the government from their experiment on you. We could only send one of our own there to bless you and ensure it didn’t get out of hand. We failed.” She folded her hands in her lap and fixed me with a level stare. “As for how I knew that it was you… I saw the scars on your back.”

  My blood seemed to stall in my veins, stopping my heart and pulse, as I remembered the day when I looked into the mirror and saw those leathery devil’s wings extending behind my back. It was laughable that the church thought they’d be able to bless something so cursed.

  “I’d never thought I’d come to meet you face-to-face, but God works in strange, miraculous ways.”

  I met her smile with a glare. “Leave God out of this, Sister. The people who put those wings on my back were just that—people. God has nothing to do with anything.”

  Sister Adaline’s smile turned down slightly but didn’t vanish entirely. “It’s a shame you feel that way, Mr. Clemmons. Because I believe God led that girl to you.”

  Electric tingles ran up and down the base of my spine at the mention of her.

  “Do you know what she is?” I asked.

  “The siren, of course.”

  “Then you know that we have to leave. Monsters will be coming for her. Soon.”

  “Yes, I imagine many people would be after her power.”

  Thinking back to my revelation with Gin, I asked, “Do you know of a corporation with the acronym BKH? That’s who’s after her.”

  Sister Adaline shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. I’m somewhat limited in my knowledge when it comes to business and economics.” She gave a rueful smile. “Moves too fast for an old woman like me. Besides, I have other things that take up my attention. Speaking of which, I’d like to show you something.” She stood from her chair. “If you feel up for walking, I’d ask that you follow me.”

  She crossed to the door and paused, waiting. I threw off the covers and got to my feet gingerly. I was wearing slacks, but my chest was bare except for the clean white bandages along my side. Grabbing the shirt draped on the corner of the bed, I threaded my arms through the sleeves and followed Sister Adaline out the door, buttoning as I walked.

  My bare feet made little noise across the stone floor as the abbess led me around the corner, down the stairs, and into a side door opposite from the kitchen and laundry.

  It was a church office full of books and shelves and papers, and…what looked like a small laboratory.

  The sight of a microscope, glass vials, and various scientific instruments on a very clean, stainless-steel table made me pause.

  Just who were these nuns?

  Sister Adaline closed the door behind me and gestured that I take the seat across from her. I stayed where I was, still staring at the miniature lab.

  “I dabbled in biology some years ago,” she explained, “before I found the calling of the church. It’s actually what I wanted to discuss with you. Please, take a seat.”

  I stood there while she sat at her desk, and we stared at each other a long while, almost in a stalemate. I wanted to get Eris and leave, especially now that I had a solid clue as to who her creator was. But I was still weak from unleashing my flames and the Mother Superior knew it.

  She smiled and steepled her fingers. “There is nothing you can do for Ms. Eris at the moment. You are both safe here, so please, indulge me.”

  Grudgingly, I took the seat before her.

  “Why are you keeping us safe?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

  “We’ve been providing sanctuary to refugees for hundreds of years. And if Mildred told you about us, then I trust you.”

  At the name of the girl I’d just killed, a wave of nausea swept through me.

  I can’t. I can’t. Kill me. Kill me.

  “So you knew her.”

  “Oh, yes. She actually lived here up till a couple years ago. Her parents had been killed during a box job gone wrong. They were gunned down. Innocent store owners. Her mother was one of our parishioners. Millie came to me at thirteen, not sure how to make her way in the world. We hadn’t started taking orphans at that time, but we let her stay, thinking maybe she could adopt the way of Christ. But…” Sister Adaline shook her head, hiding what seemed to be tears in her eyes. “She was too full of hate.”

  “She said the ones who killed her parents were monsters, real ones, and she wouldn’t let it go. She found the Cerberus Club, found Gin, and decided to go undercover. I begged her not to, but she wanted to do something. Couldn’t live with herself otherwise. So she began feeding information to the BOI and, of course, to me. Gin found out what she was doing, but instead of killing her, she gave Millie a choice—become a monster herself or have everyone here, at this church, murdered.

  “So Millie chose to become a cyclops. She knew that Gin had been experimenting with that monster part and its abilities. Once she had the eye, she used its power to wipe all knowledge of St. Agnes from Gin’s mind. But it took so much out of her that she started to deteriorate. Her mind’s walls crumbled. She worried every day that Gin would find out more of her secrets now that they shared one mind. If Gin remembers our existence here—”

  “She won’t,” I interrupted, my voice hoarse.

  Sister Adaline’s brow furrowed. “How do you know for sure?”

  “Because I killed Millie.”

  The words felt like Latin. Dead. The language of a distant, strange land.

  The blood drained from Sister Adaline’s face and her wrinkled lips parted. The two of us stared at each other in silence, until the abbess wiped at her eyes and took one long, slow breath. In and out.

  “Why?”

  “She asked me to.”

  “Did she?”

  “Begged me.”

  “I see.” The old woman bowed her head. “May God watch over her soul.”

  I said nothing. The heat in my chest was already back, singeing my heart.

  Sister Adaline reached for a handkerchief in her desk to wipe her eyes. “I suppose she felt like her job was done, in a way. She sent me the most important piece of information I’ve ever discovered in the decade I’ve spent investigating this trade.”

  I straightened, sitting forward.

  “Who? Eris?”

  “No. Those three children.”

  Now it was my turn to be shocked. “Those…what are you talking about?”

  “Gin has been working on experiments—”


  “I know, with children and the chimera agent.”

  “The chimera agent is just part of it.”

  I frowned. “I’m not following.”

  “It’s better if I show you.” Sister Adaline stood from her desk and crossed to the little laboratory desk. She picked up a blood smear—a drop of blood squished between two pieces of glass—and inserted it under the microscope. “This is a sample of my blood.”

  I looked into the microscope and saw normal blood cells and platelets. McCarney had me study some biology, especially hematology, the study of blood, so I knew enough to see that this seemed to be a healthy, normal drop of blood.

  “And this is a sample of your blood.” She inserted another blood smear after removing hers. If she thought I’d get angry at her for taking my blood without my permission, she didn’t show it.

  My blood looked normal, with the exception of tiny, miniscule floating light blue particles. “That’s the chimera agent,” I observed.

  “Correct. And this”—she slid a third blood smear in place—“is Marion’s.”

  Again, normal blood cells and platelets, then the chimera agent, then a third particle. It was green and shaped like a slug.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Are you familiar with Dr. Rivers’ work in virology?”

  “The study of viruses?”

  “Yes. Dr. Rivers headed the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. His research is far more advanced than what the public is aware of. He has helped develop a microscope that allows us to see these particles…” She gestured to the microscope. “A gift from him, if you can believe it. We’re old friends. Anyway, all three of these children have what looks like a virus in their bloodstream.”

  “But they’re not sick, or they don’t look it.”

  “No, they’re not sick, but they are infectious.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The morning after those children slept in the same room with the others, the rest of the orphans had a slight fever. It didn’t last for more than a few hours. I thought it odd, so I tested their blood. The other children now all have the chimera agent and these particles in their blood stream.”

  I stepped back, my knees weakening, and almost fell over the chair I’d been sitting in. “You’re saying they were infected by a virus that Marion, Kenneth, and Eugene carried and now they have the chimera agent?” I thought for a minute and glanced at her other blood smears. “What about blood from other sisters? From adults?”

  She shook her head. “Yes, I thought of that. But none of us felt feverish at all. I checked our blood compared to theirs and it all looked normal. It’s clear that whatever virus this is only affects children.” She looked at me with a grave, stone-face expression. “If my findings are accurate, then every child in Chicago could be turned into a monster if this virus were to spread.”

  After leaving the office, I went to find Eris. I had to talk to her. She needed to know about this virus Gin had manufactured. I was supposed to be the one with all this experience, but I was beginning to rely on her morality as my own compass. What did she think?

  When I’d asked Sister Adaline why she was showing me all this, her wrinkled lines had formed into a hard mask of severity. “Because the BOI can do something about it.”

  While I wasn’t a BOI agent anymore, her words had given me a glimmer of hope. Maybe I could convince McCarney that this virus was much more important than the lost siren.

  The nun in the kitchen told me Eris was likely to be in the chapel, so I stepped outside into the bright afternoon sunlight—now with shoes on—and walked across the courtyard toward the covered stone walkway that led into the chapel.

  Slipping into the shadows of the back of the sanctuary…that’s when I saw her.

  Heard her.

  She was singing. At long last, I was hearing her sing.

  I was so captivated that I’d almost forgotten she hadn’t been able to speak an hour ago.

  “When the dawn is breaking…”

  Her voice shined through the rest of the little children choir, but it didn’t overpower them. If anything, it enhanced them.

  “Words of faith and trusting…”

  When she sang, she smiled the biggest, brightest smile I’d ever seen on her. Ever seen on anyone, really. She was glorious in her song.

  “Angels sent from heaven…”

  There were so many paths laid out before me—go to the BOI and tell them about the virus, go in search of Eris’s creator to ensure her safety, or even simply forget it all and live in hiding for the rest of our lives.

  Whichever path I took, it’d be with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Siren

  “Your song was worth the wait.”

  I didn’t even flinch at Colt’s voice so close. Even if I hadn’t been watching his progress under the stained glass of Raphael, I’d felt him move closer. And now, with the children gone after our little practice, his presence was even more magnified. My body seemed to be drawn to his like the moon orbiting Earth.

  “When did you get your voice back?” he asked.

  Finally, I lifted my gaze to him, and my heart launched up into my throat.

  He wore a simple white shirt, his first few buttons open, revealing his collarbone and just the beginning of his muscular chest, along with dark slacks, shoes, and that was it. No fedora, or tie, or vest. Like this, he felt barer to me than being in a hospital bed, naked from the waist up.

  “One of the parishioners gave me a throat lozenge,” I said, fingering the red cellophane wrapper in the pocket of my dress. “It helped a lot.”

  “That’s good, then,” he said with a short nod. “That means we can leave soon. Eris, I wanted to talk to you about…”

  But I’d stopped listening.

  I swallowed. We can leave.

  How foolish I’d been to kiss him. Kissing him…him about to kiss me back…he wasn’t about to let me go easily.

  Standing from the altar steps, I avoided Colt’s eyes and started down the aisle, my hands twisting nervously in front of my waist. His footsteps fell behind me and my breath grew shallow. Leaving him felt next to impossible. The temptation of…of him was too great. Even here, in church.

  I hadn’t even realized I was running until Colt caught my wrist. Our breaths sounded labored under the stone awning. Somehow we’d already made it back outside, under the walkways covered in shadows from the early evening sunlight. The door to the church was only a foot away, and though we were outside it felt more like a closet.

  “I scared you.” Colt’s words were tortured, wedged between heavy pants.

  I jerked my gaze up to meet his. The sadness there fractured my heart. Like it had when he told me his story and lifted his arm to cover his tears.

  “Of my past. Of what I did. Of what I am. I scared you.”

  I shook my head violently—almost hurting my neck in the process.

  He dropped my wrist. “Then why are you running? Was…it because of…”

  Again, I shook my head, but slower this time.

  “Eris, talk to me. Please. I’m begging you.”

  I lifted my hands to my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him, like the coward that I was. “Let me go, Colt.”

  He was silent for a long minute, then said, “I’m not touching you.”

  I wrenched my palms from my eyes and glared at him. “You know what I mean. We should…we should split.” I didn’t sound like myself. My voice was thick and anguished. “We’ve run into trouble nonstop together. It’ll be safer if we go our separate ways.”

  His heated blue gaze scanned my face. “You mean safer for me,” he said slowly.

  I said nothing, biting my bottom lip.

  “I thought we were past this. I’m not going anywhere.”
/>   Angry, frustrated tears sprang to my eyes and I stepped forward, weakly pounding his chest with the sides of my fists. “Please, I’m trying to save you, Colt. You almost died in that fire and I don’t want—”

  “You have saved me. And not just from the fire.” Wrapping his hands around my fists on his chest, he leaned down and brushed his lips against mine. Teasingly, but so, so sweet. “Your kiss was my salvation. Thanks to you, I know what redemption tastes like.”

  My fingers loosened and then curled around his shirt collar. A button popped under my grip as I tugged him closer, needing to know what my own redemption tasted like.

  Our kiss in the shade of the chapel was nothing like the one in the light of the nun’s room. It was sinful and destructive, dark and rich. Tempting and testing.

  His lips found mine first, knowing what I wanted and giving me what I needed. There was nothing tender in the pressure of the kiss. It was demanding and relentless, and I matched it force for force. A strong hand skated down my side and wrapped around my hip to find its place on my lower back. His other hand cupped my cheek, the base of his palm planted firmly in the line of my jaw.

  I was unpracticed and inexperienced, but Colt didn’t seem to care or notice. He never let one kiss last too long, kissing me as if each one held a distinct flavor in a new angle of our lips. My legs lost their feeling and I couldn’t find the strength to hold myself up. I stumbled backward into the wall, and he followed, never once stopping our embrace except when he removed his hand from my cheek to brace himself against the wall.

  And then those kinds of kisses didn’t seem to be enough. His tongue swept across my bottom lip, requesting entrance, and I gave it to him. A soft hum vibrated in the back of my throat as my tongue met his, stroke for stroke. Breath for breath.

  I was ready to hand my soul to the devil. Perhaps he already had it, what with me being a monster and all that. But if it meant I could take this moment and stretch it on for an eternity, I’d give it up to him.

  And will you condemn him, too?