I exhale with laughter, spinning so that my white gown catches the air and twists above my ankles. “Well, you are nothing without your mind.”
West pulls my hand to his lips. “The mind is a strange place.”
. . .
I woke up in the back seat of West’s Pilot. The SUV was moving, and lights flickered in and out of the dark windows in a rhythmic pattern. Moaning, I turned onto my side as a cramping pain began in my lower back and crept around to my abdomen.
“Hold on, baby,” West called urgently from the driver’s seat. My head ached, my throat felt smaller, and the left side of my face throbbed.
Moving slightly, I realized that the underside of my leg was sticky. I touched my inner thigh, coughing painfully. “I’m bleeding,” I choked.
“I know,” he replied, his voice pained as he reached for me with one arm. He found my bloodied hand, grasping it tightly. “Stay awake,” he begged.
“Logan,” I whispered, straining to see if he was in the vehicle with us.
“He’s in his car with Violet and Troy. We’re going through the fountain,” he explained gently, yielding to the right. “Roam!”
I lifted my eyes, realizing the last of his sentence was lost somewhere in my unconsciousness.
“Am I losing the baby?” I watched the bright lights of the highway against the charcoal sky, counting each twinkling bulb as we passed.
“No,” he said firmly as the SUV accelerated.
“It could be a blood clot… or infection.” My throat was sunken, my voice unfamiliar to my own ears. “Twenty… to… to thirty percent of women…”
I drifted back to the dance floor with West. The music floated through my memory, and I watched my mother doing dishes at the kitchen sink, humming the melody from the castle.
“… in 1955. Roam! Wake up!”
West was carrying me through the darkness. The fountain was illuminated by bright, white spotlights, and I focused on the basin. “Logan wait… her numbers disappear when you pass through. Yours don’t.”
I focused on Logan’s face in the spotlight. He stepped back, staring at me intently. How did I not realize that? Why do his numbers remain when I go?
“You could carry her through-” Logan began.
“Snow… no water,” I cried, tears burning my eyes. “West, there’s no water.”
He held me steadily, threading the fingers of his left hand through my own. His lips covered mine. “Just wait,” he whispered against my lips, lowering our intertwined arms into the freezing snow.
The cold snow alarmed my senses, instantly sobering. Slowly my skin thawed the snow, my body dissolving each cell at a time until my thoughts became balmy. Moving through the fountain in Russia had been instantaneous, but as the snow melted and turned to liquid, I processed every millisecond of time as the change happened.
Blood from my fingertips pooled in deep, red cyclones, corroding the snow crystal by crystal.
West’s hand detached from mine.
And we were gone.
We came out near the edge of the Hanna Fountains. West pulled me out of the fountain and lifted me over the stone edge. I instantly registered that I was no longer in pain. My face felt normal, and the constant taste of blood was gone from my mouth.
I realized suddenly that my stomach began just under my breasts and protruded inches from my waist, stretching my bloody dress to the limit.
The snow was gone and was replaced by freezing cold. The area was deserted, and I guessed that it was the middle of the night. Gasping, my warm breath billowing in front of me. “What’s the date?”
“December sixteenth… 1955.” West held me tightly, lowering me to my feet as he examined my face. “You didn’t bring your injuries through,” he said, cupping my face in his palms. “Can you stand? Are you strong enough?”
“I feel fine- just-”
I turned at a shout behind me. Violet appeared, sharing the burden of Troy’s limp body with a tall, dark haired stranger. Troy’s neck hung backward at a hideous angle, lolling on his shoulders as they moved. West took over for Violet, his eyes darting around the dark Cleveland Mall.
“There’s a van,” the stranger said, gesturing across the fountain to a building. An old Volkswagen bus was parked along the curb.
“Who is that?” I managed, my heart pounding as confusion took over. The stranger met my eyes, sighing.
“Cam, it’s me,” he muttered, straining beneath Troy’s weight. His mature voice was an octave lower. “Logan.”
I stared at him with wide eyes, unable to believe that it was actually him.
“Violet,” he hurried, “she’s freezing. Give her your jacket. I’ll give her mine in a second once I put him down-”
Violet’s eyes threw blades at the broad-shouldered man.
I gaped at him. “You’re grown up,” I managed.
His eyes swept over me. “So are you.”
West focused on the bus. “I can bust it open and wire it, but it has to be fast- and silent.” He glanced back at Troy. “I’m going to need to break his neck again. It’s already healing.”
“I’ll help,” Violet spat, tossing her jacket to me. I smiled thankfully, shrugging it over my shoulders. She produced the pocketknife she’d used to cut West’s feet free, handing it to him. “Let’s go.”
We hurried across the crunchy, frosted grass. The incredible pressure in my pelvis forced me to fall behind them all. Logan and West moved quicker, even sharing Troy’s dead weight. “Violet, don’t leave her alone,” West ordered.
“Right,” she murmured. More eye rolling.
I stopped and held my stomach, shrieking as an actual appendage pushed my tightened skin outward and slid across the inside of my body before settling on the opposite side.
Violet saw the massive shift in my stomach, stopping dead in her tracks. “Holy shit… it’s like Alien in there.”
West propped Troy against the bus, working on the door handle. “You’re thirty-eight weeks,” he said to me, and I lifted my face to his, gaping.
“Thirty-eight? I could have this baby any minute?”
“Please don’t do that,” Violet said, cringing as her eyes fixed on Logan. “Hey, you kind of look like… who’s that hot Scottish actor, with the blue eyes… you know, he was in… shit what was that movie… you know…”
West, Logan, and I stared at her.
Logan held his fingers aside Troy’s neck, checking for a pulse. “Gerard Butler?” he offered.
Violet nodded, her curls bouncing against her shoulders. “Yes! Yes, you look like him.”
“Get in,” West snapped at her, the impatience clear in his tone.
He had the bus running in minutes, and I realized that the vehicle was old, even for 1955.
“Where are we going?” I asked softly.
West answered my question as he dumped Troy in the back. “It’ll take hours to get to North Carolina. This tank is almost empty.” His eyes met mine and softened. “I need you to understand that we’re a little desperate here, Roam.” He lifted me into the passenger’s seat, leaving the back open for Violet and Logan. I reached for the seatbelt before realizing the vehicle had no restraints.
“Desperate?” I murmured, flattening my palm over my stomach.
“I have to do some things that are wrong,” he added, smoothing my hair away from my face. I nodded and leaned into his arms, and he gripped me against his chest, his own hand covering mine as the baby moved beneath our touch. I curled into his hug, trembling with the combination of cold and fear.
“I understand,” I whispered. He kissed me softly, his hand circling over my lower back.
“Look away when I do it,” he hushed against my ear. I nodded, watching him back away and move into the back with Troy.
I realized that he was about to snap his neck. Slapping my hands over my ears, I squeezed my eyes closed as quickly as I could.
We were on the road before I opened my eyes again. Questions burst into my mind, and
I tried to hold them back until we were safely out of Cleveland. The city downtown appeared abandoned. Even in the middle of the night in 2012, someone would be out for one reason or another.
Several cars were parked along the street like the bus was, and it took a while before I realized that they were parked at residences. We pulled onto Euclid Avenue, and I gasped at the chain of stores and restaurants. Windows were dark, but the elaborate holiday displays inside beckoned customers without needing illumination. Higbees, May Company, and the Halle Store, though closed, stood out in the darkness. Public Square was lit brilliantly with fat Christmas bulbs, wreaths, trees, and garland.
“I don’t even recognize this place,” I said, my hands resting on my too-tight sweater dress. “I…” My eyes caught the mirror just outside the window. “Oh my God! I forgot that I’m different- I look different…”
“Roam,” West murmured, and I turned to him, widening my eyes.
“I’m her?” I ran my fingers over the creamy, white skin as I turned back to my reflection, marveling at the dark contrast of blond hair and black eyebrows and lashes. My eyes, still green, framed a more rounded face, my chin not as long and more petite. My nose perched between my cheeks like a button, rosy from the air outside. “I’m… cute,” I realized, grinning and raising my eyebrows. I tried an angry expression, and then pouted my lips. “How old am I?”
“Twenty-one.” West reached for my hand, gripping my fingers in his. “And yes, you’re cute, baby,” he replied with an amused smirk.
“Gerard Butler, like the movie 300? Or Gerard Butler, like Phantom of the Opera?” Logan’s unfamiliar voice sounded from behind me, and I turned to him and Violet in the back seat.
“I don’t know. Take off your shirt and sing something,” Violet ordered, delivering a hard kick to Troy’s stomach with her booted foot.
I shuddered. North Carolina? Back to the cottage? I spread my hands over my rounded belly again.
Where we wait…
“We’re going to wait for the baby,” I realized out loud, panic settling in the pit of my stomach. “Where is my baby? From 2012? How much time is passing there? What happened to my body there? When we go back will I be bleeding again? Violet is immortal? How long have you known that, Logan? I can’t have a baby yet! I’m not ready-”
“Hey.” West shook his head, squeezing my hand. “I knew the questions were coming, but not all at once.”
“Where’s my baby?” I demanded. “This isn’t my baby!”
His eyes met mine in the semi-darkness. “This is our baby, Roam. That’s what matters.”
I considered him, taking a steadying breath. “What is my name?”
“Roam Eva Camden.”
I gave him a look. “I mean now. In 1955.”
He offered me a sideways glance. “Anastasia. I called you Annie.”
“How much time passed while you were in 1977? I need to calculate the ratio between time here and time in 2012-”
“One year,” he interrupted.
“One year to… three months?” My mind jumped to the intense movement that was beginning again in my stomach. “I can’t have a baby, yet, I’m not ready!”
The man behind me exhaled slowly. “My ears are bleeding. I didn’t think it was possible for you to shriek that high.”
“Logan!” I protested.
Violet shifted forward, kneeling between West and me. “Can we address the topic of me being immortal, please?”
West turned to her, and I watched an emotion that I’d never seen pass over his face, trying to discern it. “I will talk to you about that later, privately.”
She raised an eyebrow, still staring his way. “You told Logan to kill me? To gain Troy’s trust?”
West narrowed his eyes. “I told Logan that I suspected that you were immortal so that he would know that you were safe.” He looked in the rearview mirror, his voice lowering to a growl. “Not to kill you.”
Logan’s brows snapped together defensively. “But it worked. Otherwise, I’d be in body bag, and so would Roam.”
“Is our baby… immortal?”
My question sent the van into utter silence. After a long pause, West turned to me. “I think so, baby. Once she’s born.”
Violet stared out the windshield at the dark road. “How could you know that I was immortal… unless…” she lowered her eyes, focusing on her hands.
Unless she had died.
I wanted to comfort her, to answer her questions, but West was already turning to her. “I will talk to you alone,” he said gently.
Logan’s… or the stranger’s… voice cut through the emotional silence in the van. “So, we get to this cottage you own by the beach, we tie this asshole up in some chains, slice his arm off, and wait for Roam to deliver the baby. Is that the plan?”
Violet tousled her curls, narrowing her eyes. “Won’t it grow back? The arm?”
“I can’t get an epidural,” I thought out loud, frantically holding my stomach. “I need to know more about the history of medicine, specifically births in the fifties. I need a book-”
“Listen.” West’s authoritative tone eased my nerves. His eyes constantly lowered to the gas gauge. “Logan- yes, that’s the best I’ve got right now. Violet- yes, it will regenerate, but it’ll take time. How much time, I don’t know. Roam,” he added, turning to me to spread his fingers over my stomach lovingly. “I’ll be with you through it all. I promise.”
I warmed, instantly wanting to curl into his arms. “Everything will be… okay?”
The baby moved beneath his touch, and he smiled broadly, the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face since he returned.
He nodded, his hand tightening over our child. “It will be.”
Chapter Ten
I slept on and off for the next eight hours, waking only when the baby pushed against my bladder. I couldn’t go into public restrooms covered in blood without attracting attention, so I did what I could along the road in the darkness, concealed by Violet’s coat.
By late afternoon, we were in Richmond, Virginia. With no I-77, the trip was taking longer than we’d expected. West and Logan worked together to acquire the funding for our gas and food.
I watched from the van as Logan bumped into an elderly man outside of a gas station before falling all over himself to apologize. As he brushed the man’s jacket off, I watched him carefully remove his wallet. He chatted with the man for another couple of minutes before returning to the van parked at the pump.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I demanded as he moved into the driver’s seat. West and I had moved to the back to rest. I doubted I’d sleep at all with Troy’s dead body in the back of the van, under a blanket.
Logan grinned. “I’ve seen enough movies. After we get you out of that bloody dress, your belly will be our biggest asset.”
He chuckled at his pun, and I punched his shoulder softly. “Ha ha. You’re a comedian, even in 1955.”
“I’m working on getting her some clothes right now.” West counted the money in the wallet that Logan had pilfered, plus the money from two other wallets from earlier stops in the day. We had all begun to realize that we needed better facilities. “Roam, I’ll buy you something warm that doesn’t attract attention.”
I moved closer to him. “I don’t want to slow us down-”
“There’s a store or something.” Violet pointed out the window, squinting to read the sign. “Miller & Rhoads... it looks huge. Look, it’s all decorated for Christmas.”
West turned to Logan. “Stay with Roam. Don’t let her out of your sight. Violet, I need your help finding clothes. It’s early, so hopefully we won’t get too many strange looks.”
“I can blend, Daddy-O,” Violet answered, glancing my way. “What size do you think you are?”
I held my hands upwards in frustration. “I don’t know!”
“Violet, come on.” West turned to me, pulling me against him softly. “I’ll be right back, baby. Just don’t move. If you t
hink Troy’s moving at all, get out and run.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “You snapped his neck fifteen minutes ago. He’s out for at least two hours,” he drawled. A thick shadow of hair grew from his sideburns to his chin.
Violet and West hurried to the store. I did my best to get comfortable, but the strange muscle pangs in my back were incredibly painful after sitting for so long.
After ten minutes of silence, Logan cleared his throat. “Roam? Do you feel okay?”
I shifted awkwardly. “I’m fine,” I assured him. When he stared at me from the passenger’s seat, and I backed against the window self-consciously. “What?”
He shrugged. “It’s just so… it feels good to know that you’re alive. That I didn’t…”
He stopped speaking, and I tried to make sense of his words.
I suddenly remembered his story about the gas station and the shotgun, and my heart broke for him.
“Logan,” I began softly, glancing nervously at Troy. I tried not to get too close to him as I shifted in the seat.
“I hated to let you think I was working with him. When I held you while he slapped you like that, I fucking- I almost lost it- I-”
“Logan, please stop. I knew you that wouldn’t hurt me.”
He turned to face the windshield, sighing. “When we get to North Carolina, I’ll help secure Troy… and wait. When the baby is born, if nothing changes, then I’m taking Troy through another fountain, and you can stay with West. No one knows how the baby will fulfill this prophecy, or when. It could take years.”
I listened to his pained words as he spoke. “Logan,” I protested, cringing at an uncomfortable cramp. “You can’t be responsible for him for the rest of your life. You can’t leave your family behind.”
“You are,” he countered, turning to look at me. Though I was getting more used to his face, our intimate conversation was unsettling while he looked like a stranger to me. “You can’t go back with a baby, Roam. You can’t just show up at home with an infant and explain it away like we did the numbers.”
I lowered my eyes to my blank arm. The moment that Logan traveled, the numbers disappeared from my arm. “Why do you think your numbers stay? Yours are still for Ohio.”
Fall (Roam Series, Book Two) Page 9
