Chapter 163

He’s cackling with laughter when I hang up on him. I have just enough time to shut the teak doors before an earth-shattering boom from the far side of the building splits the world into a million little pieces. The next one might very well be the last thing I ever hear.

I’m fumbling with my phone trying to send off a text to Wren. If these are my final few seconds on earth, I want to spend them writing to her. Leaving her with my last words, my last promises.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I mutter as my fingers fly over the keyboard.

I finish and hit Send, but I don’t know if the message goes out before the closest explosion erupts. Even through the thick wardrobe, it’s awe-inspiring. Death by fire. A fitting end, if it is indeed my end.

Heat and heaviness knock me in every direction at once as the teak cabinet topples on its side. It feels like I’m being crushed to death. No, I am being crushed to death.

If the weight on my chest doesn’t kill me, the dust in my lungs will.

My phone lights up, and even though it’s barely an inch from my fingers I can’t reach it. I can’t move.

The darkness, the heat, the fucking weight… It’s swallowing me up between its black teeth. I desperately want to fight, but the jaws are too strong.

As consciousness starts to fade, I have only one thought. One feeling. One name on my lips.

Wren.

39

WREN

It’s been a while since I’ve had a bad dream, but this one’s a doozy.

I dream that I’m locked in a cage hanging over the ocean and Dmitri is lying on the beach, wrestling with a giant, black serpent with fangs almost as big as he is. I can see the serpent’s moves before he makes them, but my voice is gone. Even when I try to speak, nothing comes out. Only my screams echo across the air towards the sandy wasteland where Dmitri is fighting for his life.

I feel helpless—able to see the future, but unable to make a difference in the outcome.

“Dmitri! He’s coming for your feet! Feint to the left! The left!”

But it’s like some invisible fingers have reached down my throat and ripped my voice clean out. The snake licks its fangs and I know somehow he’s about to go for Dmitri’s head next.

No! I groan on the inside. I can’t watch this. I can’t…

But it’s too late. In a blur of black motion, the serpent has clamped its jaws over Dmitri. One powerful bite and my husband is gone. Where he once stood, there are now only bloody streaks of gore and a wisp of his cologne.

The serpent rears its black head and looks up at me. It rises, uncoiling itself higher and higher and higher until it can look me levelly in the eyes. Its irises are a stunning and terrifying blue.

“Please,” I whisper because now, somehow, I’ve gotten my voice back, “not my baby.”

“Your baby’s already dead,” the serpent hisses happily, smiling wide enough that I can see the remnants of my husband on its teeth.

I open my mouth and scream as the serpent lunges for me. It doesn’t hurt like I expected. It just feels inevitable. I’m washed up in the heat of his mouth. Wet and sticky and lonely.

“No!” I scream. “No! No…”

My eyes fly open and I realize that I’m not suspended over the ocean in an iron cage. There is no snake and there is no beach and neither my husband nor I are dead.

I’m lying in my bed, surrounded by feathery cushions and a pregnancy pillow tucked under my legs. “Dmitri,” I whimper, reaching for him the way I always do when I’m scared or uncertain.

But my hand meets only empty space. There’s no sign of him anywhere. Not in the bed and not in this room. I had fallen asleep with him beside me, though, hadn’t I?

The dream…

It felt so damn real. The damp death I felt just as the snake swallowed me… I can still feel it now. On my legs…

Throwing the sheet off me, I realize that my legs are in fact wet. Not only was that the worst dream in the world, but also, I’ve gone and peed myself? When it rains, it pours, huh?

Except… that’s not urine.

I touch it, horror winding through my gut, and I brace myself to see blood on my fingertips.

But it’s not that, either.

It’s clear. It’s thin. It’s watery.

“Oh my God,” I breathe as my unease turns to a cautious excitement. “It’s time. The baby’s coming.”

I lurch out of bed so fast that I almost tip over. I throw on all the lights and then grab my phone and call Dmitri with trembling fingers.

“Come on, come on,” I beg to my empty room. “Pick up!”

I cut the line and call him again. No answer.

Again. No answer.

Again…

I repeat the process until it becomes cripplingly obvious that he isn’t going to pick up. Now what? Gripping my belly tightly as though it might fall off, I hobble to the next room, hoping that Dmitri’s going to be there, so lost in his work that he hasn’t noticed his phone vibrating.

I fling the door open to discover it… empty.

“Dammit!” I cry out. “Dmitri!”

I turn my back on his office and stumble my way towards the living room, clutching my phone and trying desperately to think of who I can call. Why can’t I remember anyone’s names?!

“Aleks!” I yell out loud, hastily dialing in his number. “Come on, come on… please pick up. Please!”

He doesn’t.

And that’s when the excitement starts to curdle in the pit of my stomach. Because there’s no way Dmitri and Aleks would both be unavailable unless something big had happened. Unless something serious had happened. Unless…

The nightmare!

I wrack my brain, trying to remember the details of the nightmare. Was it just a throwaway dream or was it a prophecy? A warning? Was it trying to tell me that I’m on my own now?

“Calm down, Wren,” I snap at myself. “Don’t panic. Just breathe and stay calm.”

I’m still working on my first breath when a flash of pain travels up my body. A scream rips its way from my throat and sends me keeling over from this new throbbing agony I’ve never experienced before.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…” I groan obsessively as I stare at my useless phone. When the pain finally releases its clamp on me, I shove myself back upright. “Fuck it! I’ll get myself to the hospital.”

I start to limp to the elevators and smash the button to summon a ride down.

Except…