Dreaming Anastasia

by Joy Preble

  We belly across the floor through the kitchen area. As we reach the table, the pounding of bullets stops. But I know it’s far from over.

  “Did they give up?” Anne’s voice is barely a whisper.

  A vicious pounding at the door is our answer. The floor vibrates beneath our bodies with the impact of whatever is now attacking from the hallway.

  My mind is racing. We don’t have much time. No ward is invincible, and the forces slamming into ours will soon power their way through. I shift my gaze to the door and watch in dismay as a thin crack edges its way steadily from the door’s bottom up toward the ceiling. The entire room begins to sway.

  “What’s happening?” Anne tightens her grip on my hand and reaches for her backpack with the other. The floor rocks so violently that the motion rolls us from under the table and tumbles us in a tangle of limbs out toward the center of the loft. Her pack flies in the opposite direction.

  “It’s not going to hold,” I yell over the noise that seems to be filling everything around us. Rusty or not, my magic is strong. But whatever this is, it’s stronger yet.

  I pull myself up, dragging Anne with me. “We’ve got to get out. Now!”

  “Out? Out where? How?” Her voice—barely audible above the buzz of sound and vibration—is shrill, terrified.

  There’s no time to explain, and she wouldn’t be able to hear me even if there was.

  “Come on!” I tighten my grip on her arm and pull her toward the other end of the loft. “This way!”

  I can barely think over the roar of noise. We slip and slide over the swaying wooden floor. Above us, a light fixture shatters, and shards of glass spray everywhere. I curse—in a couple of languages—and move faster, dragging Anne behind me as I go.

  “Ethan!” she cries. “The door!”

  I whip my head around. The thin crack in the door has widened. It’s splitting open. The door itself is bulging inward, propelled by some huge force. Whatever this is, it’s enormous. And that’s not good.

  The floor undulates, and again we start to slide toward the middle of the room. I can feel Anne’s fear, feel the pulse leaping in her wrist as I clutch it and—with an audible grunt—drag us to the far wall.

  Then the noise that has continued to surge and pound around us changes. I can hear it gather itself into one chugging center, an impossibly loud rushing sound. It’s as though the very air inside the room is being sucked forward into some invisible whirlpool—a whirlpool that’s going to swallow us whole if I don’t do something soon.

  Very soon.

  But even as I consider my rather limited options, it’s too late. The door bursts open, and a swirling vortex of mist and cloud muscles its way inside.

  Wednesday, 2:00 pm

  Anne

  It’s Baba Yaga,” I scream at Ethan. The wind swallows my words. “The hands! They’re going to come again.”

  But they don’t. Whatever this is, it’s not that.

  Ethan tightens his hold on my arm. His fingers dig into my wrist. The wind keeps rushing at us, stinging, biting. My eyes close to thin slits. Through them, I make out Ethan searching the wall for something. He reaches with his free hand, and I see he’s grabbed onto a small metal circle protruding from the wall.

  “ Ya dolzhen! ” he calls into the howling wind. “ Ya dolzhen! ” He calls it out again, this time in English. “I must!”

  He yanks again at the metal ring. I see it give a little, and he yanks some more, a grim slant of a smile playing on his lips. A piece of the wall, like a panel or something, gives way. It slides slowly but steadily, revealing an old freight elevator.

  “I have to let go of you,” Ethan tells me. “Something’s blocking the spell.” His voice cracks in the wind. “Brace yourself.”

  I nod, letting him know I’ve heard him, then space my feet to find my balance. I nod again. His gaze on mine, he lets go. I stand there, the wind sweeping around me.

  Ethan shoves at the elevator door. It gives a little, but not enough. Whatever he’s trying, it’s no match for the whirling winds.

  I look down at my hands. They’re sparking, blue melding into a pure, clear white—an elemental force that’s working its way up from inside me. Some of the sparks careen from my fingertips and bounce off the metal bars of the elevator.

  “Let me help,” I say. “I can do this, Ethan.” Everything inside me is pulsing. I don’t understand any of it, really. But I know it wants out.

  “You’re not ready.” He yanks at the elevator door again. Nothing. “You can’t control your power. Not now. Not yet.”

  I don’t stop to answer. Whatever’s boiling up inside me needs me to use it. I position my hands next to his on the metal bars of the freight elevator. “On three,” I shout over the roaring of the wind. I have no earthly idea why I feel I can do this. I just know I can.

  I count. The wind snatches each number as it exits my mouth. On three, we push together.

  The door doesn’t budge.

  This time the wind whips so fiercely around us that I lose my grip and feel myself being sucked backward. Ethan grabs for my wrist, pulls me to him.

  “Again!” he shouts to me. “Let’s try it again!”

  We center ourselves and push. The crazy blue-white sparks fly off my fingers like a thousand Fourth of July sparklers. For a few seconds, nothing else changes. Then I feel something move. With a giant creak, the elevator door slides open. We tumble inside, the door clanging shut behind us. Ethan slams his fist on the control panel, and with a lurch, the elevator begins its descent.

  Behind us, the seething mass of energy explodes into the rest of the loft.

  Wednesday, 2:30 pm

  Ethan

  We need to keep moving,” I tell Anne as the elevator bounces to a stop in the basement. Her hands are still glowing with power—a great deal of it.

  “Just go,” she says. “Go. I can keep up with you.”

  I hesitate, then run. She keeps pace, following behind me across the wide expanse of the concrete-floored basement until we skid to a stop at the outside door.

  “Hang on.” I hold up my arm. “They may still be out there.”

  I move from the door to a pile of wooden crates stacked unevenly on the side wall. I mount the lowest crate, scaling the pile of boxes so I can peer out the small window above us. They bobble back and forth beneath my feet, threatening to give way with each step I take.

  Perched on top, I scan the street, then feel a muscle in my jaw tic as I see what I hoped I wouldn’t.

  “Are they out there?” Anne asks from below me. “What do you see?”

  I don’t answer, just turn and climb down. A wave of exhaustion flows over me. This is getting worse and worse, and I still have no idea why.

  “They’re Viktor’s men,” I tell Anne. “I thought I recognized one of them at the park. Now I’m certain.”

  “You’re sure?” Her voice rises. I pace the floor as she continues. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would they suddenly turn against you?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. My jaw clenches again. “The one I know—his name is Dimitri. He—he was once a monk, as I was. But I haven’t seen him since—well, for a very long time. Over the years, the search kept us all apart. It’s only our contact with Viktor that connects us anymore.”

  “But are you really positive? I mean, if it’s been that long, you might be wrong. He might be—”

  “I’m not wrong.” I rub my hand over my face, trying to get a grip on what’s happened here. “I—I think they want to stop you. Stop us from getting to Anastasia.”

  Anne’s voice rises again. I can feel the panic echoing off her in waves.

  “Getting to Anastasia? But we don’t even know where she is, Ethan. You think she’s in Baba Yaga’s hut, but where’s that? It’s not like I’m going to just walk down the street or take the train downtown and ask for directions. Even if this place really does exist, even if Anastasia is really somehow still alive, how the hell do I find her? So tell
them it’s no big deal. They don’t have to kill us. I’ll never be able to do it anyway.”

  “Of course you can,” I tell her. I struggle to keep my voice calm, my tone even. “It’s your—”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me that it’s my damn destiny!” she shouts at me. Her panic seems to have shifted to anger. “Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me we weren’t really about to die up there! Tell me why the hell Viktor wants to stop us! You can’t possibly be telling me everything, Ethan. There’s no way.”

  “I’m telling you all I can,” I say. I ease toward the door. If she’s about to run, I need to stop her. “I’m telling you all I know.”

  “Well, all you know just isn’t enough, damn it!” She stalks over to me, stands toe to toe. I can feel the warmth of her—and the confusion. “It’s not enough to drag me here to die for something that, for all I know, is some demented delusion on your part!”

  “Delusion?” I grab her wrists. Her hands are still glowing. “Look at your hands, Anne. You opened that elevator door, remember? Oh, I helped you, but you know the truth. Most of that power came from you. Look at that mark on your arm again. Look at that windstorm that just destroyed my loft.”

  She pulls her hands from mine. “I don’t want to look at it! I told you before. I don’t want any of it. How do I know that they’re not the good guys? Maybe you’re the bad one. Maybe Dimitri and his friend want you dead and not me.”

  “You know that’s not true.” I place my hands on her shoulders, realizing I have absolutely no idea how to reassure her. “Come. We’ll get out of here, and I’ll take you to see my friend Olensky. Maybe together, we can all make some sense—”

  “No!” she shouts at me. “No. This is so not where I want to be. How in the world could I have been so stupid? I’m not going anywhere else with you.”

  “Please, Anne,” I tell her. “You have to calm down. Let me take you to Olensky.”

  “I said no,” she tells me between gritted teeth. “And I mean no! ”

  In case I wasn’t totally sure, she places her hands on my chest and shoves. The force lifts me from my feet and hurtles me the length of the basement. My head slams into the far wall. I feel my teeth rattle together.

  Anne stares at me for a few seconds, then opens the door and runs.

  Wednesday, 3:00 pm

  Anne

  I’m an idiot, I tell myself as I listen to the echo of my own footsteps pounding the empty pavement. I let this man take me here to a loft in this mostly deserted neighborhood. I have no transportation, no backpack, no cell phone, and no one to ask for help.

  And what would I tell anyone who happened by anyway? That I knew this guy for all of two seconds and bought into his whole X-Men scenario? Yeah, right. We all want to wake up one day and suddenly have some kind of superpower. But I just want to get—

  Like in the movies—the ones where the stupid girl goes into the scary haunted house even though the entire audience is screaming at her not to—I’m suddenly aware that there are other footsteps smacking the sidewalk besides mine.

  A rough hand slaps itself across my mouth, and someone’s arm wraps itself around me, jerking me backward. The unexpected blow to my momentum sends me tripping and tumbling to the sidewalk. I land hard, pulling my attacker down with me. Too scared even to scream, I look over into the hard, slate gray eyes of the man Ethan had identified as Dimitri.

  Wednesday, 3:00 pm

  Ethan

  My legs buckle as I stand up and try to follow Anne. I lean against the cold cement wall and shake my head, trying to clear my vision. I’m still seeing double, and there’s an ache in my jaw that I don’t think is going to fade anytime soon.

  I close my eyes. The image of Anne’s face looms in front of me—the fear, the confusion, and, of course, the anger as she threw me across the room into a wall. I should never have asked her to help me with the elevator. It’s too much, too soon. All that power—

  Truth is , a small voice in my aching head reminds me, without her power, we’d have never gotten out of there.

  I hoist myself off the floor. I’ve got to find her. She’s in danger that neither of us fully understand—danger I should have anticipated but didn’t. Zalupa.

  And then I drop back down to the floor as a bullet grazes my arm. Dimitri’s partner strides toward me, gun drawn.

  “Your girl is ours now, Etanovich,” he says. He’s speaking in English, but I can hear a trace of the old country in his accent. “Face it. You have outlived your cause.”

  He fires again, but the bullet flies over my head as I roll out of range. I have no time for this Russian melodrama. Since he’s shooting at me, it’s clear that he has no clue who or what he’s signed on to help—no clue about me. If he’s telling the truth—and God, don’t they always tell the truth when they think you’re not going to live long enough to do anything about it—they have Anne, and she is not like me. If I let him go, he could kill her.

  “She may be yours for now,” I say as I push myself up in one fluid motion and turn to face him. “But,” I add as he fires again and a bullet lodges itself in my left shoulder, “I think you’ve forgotten that I’ve outlived almost everyone. Including you.”

  His eyes widen as I stride over to him. He shoots again. I jolt as the bullet burns its way into the right side of my chest, but I keep moving. Then I rip the gun from his grasp and pocket it.

  I hurry to the door, my fingers weaving a spell behind me. In seconds, the man is kneeling helplessly on the basement floor, clutching his throat as an invisible force tightens around it.

  “Stop,” he squeezes out.

  But I don’t. Something raw and fearsome has shifted inside me. Whatever we’ve been playing at here, the rules have changed.

  “Guess you weren’t one of us,” I say as I open the door. Behind me, I can hear the man gasping for air, but I keep moving. “Guess Dimitri didn’t explain that pesky immortality clause as carefully as he could have.”

  I head out the door without looking back.

  Wednesday, 3:05 pm

  Anne

  You’ve got the wrong person, mister,” I tell Dimitri. I’m certain neither of us believe that for a second, but he’s dragging me up off the sidewalk toward the black limousine that’s pulled up out of nowhere, so I figure I’m entitled to protest. “Let me go!”

  “I do not think so,” Dimitri mutters. He’s got me clutched up tightly against him. His grip is like iron. I can feel his breath against my neck, smell the tangy odor of his leather jacket.

  “Now be a good girl,” he says, “and I won’t hurt you.”

  “You’re already hurting me,” I say. “Let me go. Now!” I manage to twist enough to execute a sharp kick to one of his shins.

  “Why, you little—!” He grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls hard. The tiny bit of me that’s not consumed by fear and confusion wonders if this is going to turn into a chick fight.

  “Viktor said you’d be a fiery one,” he says, and shoves me a few steps closer to the limo. Its back door opens. “I don’t know how you escaped that loft, but this time, you’re not getting away.” He pushes me again. I can see the black interior of the limo looming in front of me.

  I swallow down the bitter bile that’s risen in my throat. It’s occurred to me in the last few minutes that I’ve just run from the wrong person—not to mention that I’ve slammed him into a wall. Which makes me realize that I might not have to put up with this burly Russian who’s trying to kidnap me.

  “Listen, Boris,” I tell him, even though I know his name is Dimitri. He’s already pissed at me, so what do I care what he thinks now? “I said you were hurting me!” Blue-white sparks fly from my fingers as I wrench free of him and maneuver quickly out of reach. Inside me, the power surges, replacing my fear with something darker, stronger.

  Dimitri tries to grab me again, but I’m too quick for him. I turn and sprint back toward Ethan’s building. Footsteps pound the pavement behind me.

&
nbsp; Still running, I turn to peek over my shoulder. Sure enough, Dimitri is closing in on me again, his hand reaching for something in his pocket. I may have developed superstrength, but somehow, I’m pretty sure I’m not impervious to bullets. My heart lurches in my chest as I push myself to run even faster.

  Then I see it: Ethan’s car—with Ethan in it, I hope—screeches to a halt across the street. I sprint over to it, not even looking to see if anything else—a big limo, perhaps—is in my path.

  Ethan—the man I tried to squash not minutes ago—leans across and shoves open the passenger door. He’s already got his foot on the gas pedal as I leap in and crash into the seat. I bounce around some more as he executes a sharp U-turn, and we speed off, leaving Dimitri cursing on the sidewalk behind us.

  My most precious Mama—

  Like my sisters, you are a believer in love, and like me, you have secrets. But mostly, you are my mother. The woman who gave birth to four daughters before she finally brought a son into this world. A son for whom you would have given your life if you could. I saw your face crumble each time—and there were many—that Papa reminded you that his little tsarevitch had inherited his illness through your side of the family.

  Hemophilia—passed down through mothers who carry it but do not suffer it themselves. Passed down through your grandmother, Queen Victoria, to your mother, Alice, to you, and finally, to Alexei. This is the truth that is part of what this journal has always been about: blood. The truth that changed everything for us.

  Your blood failed you, Mama. I might not have always said this to you so bluntly, so directly, but now—well, now I cannot help but do so. It failed you, and you failed Alexei, and even if it is not the best of truths, it is what happened.

  “Father Grigory will help us,” you said. You always called Rasputin by his religious name, gave him that respect, even though at some point you must have seen, must have known how most of us saw him. That long, greasy hair, those close-set eyes that held secrets and desires much more terrible than ours. Those eyes that would not let go when he looked at me.