by Anne Frasier
“Ah, sweetheart. I loved you. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Parallel lives. It was easy to see how someone who’d lost touch with reality might be confused.
“I’m Rachel.”
He smiled crookedly. “Ah, but you are also Florence. Florence is in your veins, and in your voice, and in your slightest gesture. Can’t you feel her? Reaching through time and seasons and heavy winters? You are Florence. Your blood will be the sweetest blood I’ve ever tasted.”
She caught his face between her hands and held on tightly, forcing him to look at her. “Evan!” She gave him a wake-up shake. “Evan! Look! It’s me. Rachel.”
His eyes closed and she shouted at him again. “Damn you, Evan Stroud!” She slapped him hard. Once. Twice.
His eyes opened and flared in anger, but she saw recognition in their depths. He stared, his breathing harsh and ragged.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you sooner, but I’m here now, and you’re stuck with me. Do you hear? I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not letting you walk away from me again.”
Her words reached him.
He let out a sob and collapsed, dropping to his knees. He wrapped his arms around her legs and pressed a cheek against her thigh.
“Rachel.” Her name was muffled, his mouth against the fabric of her jeans, the words spoken with a kind of baffled wonderment. “Don’t leave.” He clung to her. “Even if you aren’t really here, don’t leave.”
She was thinking everything was going to be okay when she felt her water break.
Chapter Forty-seven
Graham handed the cash to the parking attendant. The wooden arm lifted; he stepped on the gas and the car shot out of the hospital ramp.
Kristin leaned forward in the passenger seat and looked up at the sky. “Whoa.”
Graham gripped the steering wheel tighter. “This is freaking awesome.” He’d never driven in snow.
His cell phone rang. Alastair.
“Where are you?” his grandfather asked.
“Ready to head to Old Tuonela.”
It would take only ten minutes to get there. He didn’t want Evan to be alone. And Kristin . . . Well, that had just happened. She would be leaving for Minneapolis once the storm passed, but in the meantime she needed a place to stay.
Pretty simple.
“Better come to my house,” his grandfather said. “The weather is nasty. Visibility is bad, and some north-south roads are already drifting.”
It was weird, but the snow created a feeling of safety, a sense of being in a cocoon. Beyond the car hood, streetlights were blurry and everything looked like an old photo. For a kid who’d lived most of his life in the Southwest, this was pretty cool. Graham couldn’t believe he was actually excited about the weather. “We’ll be okay.”
The signal dropped and he lost contact.
Probably for the best, Graham thought, pocketing the cell. Because Alastair might try to play the grandfather card and tell him to come home.
He stopped at a red light.
No other cars on the street. There was no sign of life other than shop window lights and traffic signals that changed even when nobody was there.
Kristin pulled out her seat belt strap, locked it, and leaned back in the seat.
“What do you think?” Graham asked. “It’s five miles to Old Tuonela. The snow isn’t that deep. It can’t get much worse before we get there.”
“I’m from Minnesota, where this would be considered a dusting. I say go for it.”
The light turned green and he hung a right, then accelerated and made a run for the hill. The car lost traction and slowed to a crawl as they crested the peak. It picked up speed again and they both exhaled in relief.
They left downtown and the river behind, heading north. Once they broke away from the protection of the buildings the wind increased. An occasional drift slowed their speed and tried to suck them off the road.
“Should I slow down?” Graham asked, both hands on the wheel as he crouched forward. “I’m not used to driving in snow.”
“You have to go fast or you’ll get stuck. You have to have enough speed to plow through the drifts. But don’t slam on the brakes. Don’t even touch the brake pedal if you can help it.”
The car felt boggy. It wouldn’t go straight, and he had to keep turning the wheel to compensate. “Look.” Back and forth with the wheel. “I’m like a little kid pretending to drive.”
They both laughed.
Maybe too loud. Maybe with too much enthusiasm.
Graham was nervous. Because of the rescue their relationship had taken a step somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where.
“If you hadn’t found me, I’d still be out there.” Kristin looked through the passenger window. “I’d be dead.”
That’s what he’d been thinking. “It was really my dad who found you.”
“But he wouldn’t have looked if you hadn’t gone to him for help.”
She was right.
He felt proud of Evan. Proud of them both. And he’d been there. He’d held her while his dad drove. He’d gotten her into the hospital.
“Look out!”
The car veered to the left; then the ass spun around, and the next thing he knew they were flying backward. Everything moved incredibly slowly and incredibly fast, as if he were computing it all with two completely different parts of his brain.
Would the car ever stop?
At the same time he appreciated the fluidity of the movement, the gliding, flying, smoothness of it contrasting with what he knew would finally come.
The impact.
With a lurch, the car stopped. He and Kristin slammed forward and were immediately jerked back by their seat belts.
He sat there a moment, heart racing.
The air bags hadn’t gone off, so the impact couldn’t have been that bad. “You okay?”
Kristin stared straight ahead, both hands on the dashboard. “Yeah, I think so.”
They took a little more time to collect themselves.
“I’ll bet we’re stuck,” she finally said.
Graham felt like such a dumb shit. “Maybe not.” The road was right behind them. He put the car in reverse. Tires spun, but the car didn’t budge.
“We’re stuck.” Not a shred of doubt in her voice.
“It was your idea to continue on,” he griped.
“You should have mentioned that you didn’t know how to drive in snow.”
Graham opened the door, stepped out, and sank to his knees. He buttoned his coat and squinted his eyes against the falling snow. He jammed his hands in his pockets, wishing he’d brought a hat and gloves.
They were near the turnoff. He was pretty sure of it.
He got back in the car. “We’re close. We should be able to walk there in a few minutes.”
“Always stay with the car. That’s the rule.”
“Since when do you obey rules, Miss Shoplifter?”
“Since I about died out there, asshole.”
“We haven’t met a single car. They probably won’t start plowing until the snow stops.”
“How much gas do you have?” She leaned over to look. “Quarter of a tank.”
“That won’t last long. We could be here all night. I say we walk.” He reached over, opened the glove box, and found a flashlight. Pushed the switch. It worked.
“I’m not leaving the car.”
That was insane. “I’m not staying here. We’re close to the house. We need to get out of here before the snow gets deeper. If we stay, we’ll end up having to hike out when the car runs out of gas, the snow is deep, and we’re cold.”
She shook her head.
She’s still weak, he realized. She shouldn’t be trudging through deep snow—at least until he had his directions figured out. “I’ll go. You stay here, and I’ll come back for you if I find the house. If I don’t find it, I’ll come back. Either way.”
He left her there.
The headlights cut into t
he storm. He followed the twin beams until they vanished.
Chapter Forty-eight
Richard Manchester wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand, stepped over the dead body, and headed up the stairs to the ground level of the museum.
A sound caused him to turn.
There was the museum worker, the one who cleaned, standing in the stairwell staring at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Richard contemplated killing him, but what was the point? He’d have to cross the expanse of polished floor to do it.
He turned and walked out the front door, down the wide steps, and into the snow-filled darkness.
Sh, sh, sh.
They were everywhere. His followers and his enemies. The ones who’d eventually turned on him.
Let them talk. Let them complain. They’d been foolish when they were alive; they were even more foolish dead.
The wind was powerful. It whipped his hair and stung his cheeks. Wonderful.
He lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.
He could smell the river. He could smell Old Tuonela. He could even smell the polish used to shine the banister of his home. And her. He could smell her. Along with his unborn baby.
He flipped up his collar and put his hands in his pockets. With each step he grew stronger and felt the cold less. Down a brick street, up a cobblestone alley. Past the morgue, and out beyond the border of the new town, where the hills grew tall and sharp and the roads turned back on themselves.
Alastair’s phone rang.
“Another call from the museum,” the dispatcher said.
“Let me guess. The Pale Immortal is roaming around again.”
“You got it.”
Alastair sighed. “Tell whoever’s on patrol to check it out. No need to report to me. I’ll follow up in the morning.”
“Will do.”
Alastair hung up.
Had Graham made it home?
He pushed the autodial for Evan’s number.
No answer.
Lights came at him, slowed, and stopped. A window was rolled down and a man leaned out. “Need a ride?”
Manchester shook his head.
“Sure?” Now the man was looking at him with strange curiosity, trying to see in the dark.
“Go on about your business,” Manchester told him, getting into his head. His voice was smooth and hypnotic. “Go home.”
Dazed, the man nodded, rolled up the window, and drove away.
People obeyed him. People did what he said. Most people.
He walked, and even though the snow was deep it didn’t matter. He enjoyed the sensation. And even though he could see only a few feet in front of him, he didn’t care. He knew where he was going.
He was close when he spotted something in the distance.
A car.
Chapter Forty-nine
“I have to go,” Evan said. “I have to get away from you.” Before I do something bad.
Rachel grabbed his hand. “You can’t leave me here alone.” Her voice was odd, breathless. She glanced past his shoulder to what was behind him. Victoria. The mummy child. “I’m having a contraction.”
His stomach plummeted while the hand holding his squeezed so hard he thought his knuckles would shatter. As soon as she relaxed, he urged her forward.
Monster. I’m a monster.
He ducked and helped her through the rip in the door. With one arm around her, he grabbed the lantern and led her back the way they’d come.
At times the path was narrow, and they had to separate in order to move single-file.
He’d almost killed her.
If not for the fact that she needed his help, he’d run from the house right now and keep running until the sun came up and he evaporated in the daylight.
His mind shifted.
Strange thoughts flitting in and out before he could fully catch and absorb them. Snapshot images of a life that wasn’t his.
The scary part was that he sometimes got it. Even looking from the outside in, things would tilt and he would slide and suddenly he understood the why and the how.
He got Richard Manchester, even when he wasn’t Manchester, even when he was still whatever was left of Evan Stroud. He understood the craving that drove the Pale Immortal. He understood the mad love he’d felt for Florence.
They reached the kitchen, and Rachel sank to the floor, her back to the wall, eyes closed, face ashen. Evan put a hand to her belly and felt a tightening.
Another contraction.
She looked up, fear in her eyes. “I have to get to Tuonela.”
He glanced at the shattered phone, fresh shame and self-loathing washing through him. “I could walk to the main road and try to get a signal with my cell phone, but if I did connect, an ambulance probably wouldn’t be able to get here.”
He could feel the possession. It moved back and forth like a gentle, swaying breeze, or perhaps a pulse.
So seductive.
Wind rattled glass. It picked up objects and hurled them against the house. Snow swirled in the broken window, the temperature in the kitchen close to freezing.
He opened the door; snow blasted him in the face.
A whiteout. Zero visibility. Even if he hadn’t tossed the keys in the snow, they wouldn’t be able to get to Tuonela. The only thing to do was to make her comfortable, hope the contractions stopped, and wait out the storm.
Rachel was truly alone with him.
A monster.
He slammed the door. Another gust of wind and the red ceiling light flickered.
He tried his cell phone, but it was more for Rachel’s benefit. Occasionally he could get a weak signal from the house. Nothing now. “We have to get upstairs.”
Two minutes later they were in the bedroom.
He eased her back on the bed, a pillow under her head.
He hoped he wouldn’t be delivering a baby, but he prepared for a birth just in case.
“Remember in grade school? When you got beaten up on the way home from school?”
“Which time was that?” he asked dryly. There had been so many.
“When I came to your rescue.”
It was obvious that she was trying to keep him grounded, keep his head in her world.
He unbuttoned her coat, slipped it from her shoulders, tossed it aside. She was wearing a man’s oversize flannel shirt.
“When you jumped on that Olson kid’s back and got beaten up yourself? Yeah, I remember.” It was before his disease had taken hold; before things had gotten dark and strange.
“Remember what you used to call me?”
“Yes.”
“Call me that again.”
He covered her with a quilt. “Enfant terrible.”
“Did you know I liked you? Even back then?”
“That’s why I teased you so much. To lighten things and keep you at a safe distance.” She’d had a crush on him, and he’d been trying to protect her, keep her from getting hurt, because at that time he’d thought of her more as an annoying kid.
“There’s no such thing as a safe distance.”
He felt a pain down deep in his soul. For what was lost. For the life they would never have. His thoughts moved backward and forward. “We couldn’t have stopped it.”
She immediately understood. “I don’t like to think that we have no control over our lives. I can’t believe that.”
“Do you think I would be this way if I could do anything about it?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re wrong. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t want this.”
“Subconsciously I think you did.”
“To be a freak? To almost kill you? Jesus, Rachel.”
“The mind is a strange place.”
He grabbed her hand and pressed her knuckles to his mouth. “I won’t think that. I can’t think that. Y o u can’t think that.”
Sweet, sweet baby. Sweet, sweet Florence.
“Tell me you don’t believe that of me,�
� he begged. Was he right? Oh, God. “I have to hear you say it.”
“Evan.” She touched his face, his hair. The sorrow in her voice and face told him everything. She thought he was insane.
Was he?
That was far worse than actually being some hybrid, a cross between a human and a nonhuman. To know that all of this was coming from him, from some strange dreamscape in his head.
“You read the journal,” she said.
“You’re saying I’m reliving the past?”
Her gaze clouded and her thoughts turned inward. “If anything happens to me, you have to take care of the baby. You have to get it to a hospital.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you.” He wouldn’t allow himself to contemplate such a loss.
“Promise me. You have to protect the baby.”
He couldn’t fathom a world without her, even if they could never be together. “I promise.”
The light flickered again. He was surprised the power hadn’t gone out. “I have to leave for a minute.”
“No!”
“We might lose power soon. I have to get the lantern.”
“Don’t leave.” Her gaze shifted and dropped. “That’s his scarf,” she said with renewed fear. “You’re wearing his scarf.”
He reached up to pull it off, then stopped. He couldn’t make himself do it.
She inhaled sharply. “It’s snowing.”
Her voice was distant now. She stared up at the ceiling, her pupils large with pain. Flakes of snow drifted from the darkness to land on her cheek. “Snowing in the house. I wonder what that means. . . .”
“The wind’s driving the snow through the cracks in the walls.”
“No, it’s something else. This is where it happened, wasn’t it?”
“Where what happened?”
“This is where she killed him. Where Florence killed Manchester. Probably in this very room.”
“Don’t think about that.”
“And maybe where my great-grandmother was born.”
He’d already considered that likely possibility, but had hoped the thought wouldn’t occur to her.