Fall (Roam Series, Book Two) (11 page)

Somewhere between consciousness and lucidity, I thought of my mother. She would hum
during her chemotherapy treatments, smiling at Morgan and me. Later, after sores plagued her mouth and the vomiting began, she’d still hum when we came into her room, comforting, assuring us that she was alright.

Even at the end…
when she knew it was over.

Be brave.
Straightening, I lifting my chin. My nose and eye throbbed; I could taste blood. A warm trail dripped from my nose to my lip. “Did you do that to him, Logan?” I asked, stronger, fear turning cold. Troy began duct-taping West’s ankles.

“No.” Logan’s breathing intensified; I recognized something in his voice.
Anger?

“
West came right to us when he saw his daughter’s life was at stake- again.” Troy grinned, crossing his arms over his chest. “He was surprised that Logan was working with me.”

“Of course he was.” I blew at
a piece of hair stuck to my bloodied lip. “Since this is it, will you answer some questions for me?”

Troy closed the distance between us. I backed against Logan
, flattened so tightly to his chest that I could feel his heart pounding on my back.

“What’s that, princess?”

“I was yours… wasn’t I?” I searched his eyes in the shadows.

Troy’s eyebrows snapped together, his fists clenching at his sides. “What did you say?” His breath was sickly s
weet, and I tried not to inhale.

“In this other world, I was yours.
” I took a steadying breath through my mouth, keeping my eyes at his neck. “But I… hurt you. How did I hurt you? What could I have done for you to kill me… over and over again?
Why do you hate me so much?
”

He sneered, lowering his hands to my waist. I gasped as they slid over my stomach, his touch through the sweater material beyond disgusting. Logan’s grasp on my wrists tightened. I felt him tense; Troy’s actions were disturbing to him.

“You want to know?” He stopped touching me as his eyes impaled mine. “We ruled.
Together
. You and my brother conspired to take the throne from me. But you would betray him as well,” he snarled, lifting his eyes to Logan’s.

“Logan was your brother?” My teeth rattled inside my mouth.

“And you whored yourself to him, as well as my knight.”

West.
My eyes shifted to West, and I stiffened. A slight movement from the open basement door caught my eye.

Violet
’s blonde head appeared in the bottom of the doorway, crawling toward West with a knife.

I looked back at Troy quickly.
She is alive… Logan will see her any minute! Engage him!

“So what happens when you
move through these doors? What are you? Are you still a king?” I cringed as he leaned impossibly close to my face.

“The doors take me to a prison. A wasteland of what my kingdom used to be.” He slid his fingers through my hair and around the back of my neck.
I cried softly, turning my face so his mouth wouldn’t touch mine. “You look like her.” His fingers tightened on my skin, and I shuddered. “
This last life is unforgiving.
”

“Take me through
… the doors,” I breathed, my eyes beseeching his unnatural gaze. “Where are they?”

“When I kill you, it won’t matter. There won’t be any doors.
There will be one universe.”

Violet sliced through the duct tape at West’s feet. I knew Logan had to be seeing her at this point; still, he was silent.

“Were we… good together?” I lowered my voice, breathing slowly. Tears streamed down my cheeks; I had no way to brush them off. “Were we in love?”

He
was entranced. My voice lulled him. “I can’t answer that for you.”

I
pulled at Logan’s hold with my right arm. He gave my wrist a squeeze before releasing me.

I knew, at that moment, that Logan wouldn’t hurt me.

Slowly, I flattened my palm against Troy’s chest, the slight pressure in my fingertips supple against his skin. Bile filled my throat and nose. “Do you think that maybe… I lived after the pool...
because I’m supposed kill you?
”

West was on his feet. The moment my eyes flickered from Troy’s face, he hissed, his hand circling my
throat before I could move. His fingers crushed my neck and I gagged, the explosive pain melting bones in my legs as cartilage mashed beneath his grasp.

Logan’s fist met Troy’s face
with a powerful blow, and he lost his grip, staggering. I fell to the floor, panting, my eyes on the horrifying scene before me.

“
I watched you die,
” Troy growled at Violet. His nose was contorted at a nauseating angle, and blood gushed down his chin. “
You were dead.
”

West, fully conscious and already healing, delivered a punch
potent enough to send him across the living room and into an end table. Troy managed to climb to his feet once more, and I watched in revulsion as West towered over him, turning his neck with a sickening crack.

His
eyes rolled in his head, and he began to choke.

Logan grabbed Violet before she could attack Troy.
“Get your
hands off me!
” She screamed, swinging at Logan.

“You’re
immortal
,” Logan held her forearms, preventing her from hitting him. West drug Troy to the front yard. “Violet… you can’t die.
West knew.
”

She stared at him, her face ashen.

“He told me,” he shook his head, his eyes watery. “I’m so sorry… I had to convince Troy…,”

I grabbed the back of the couch, pulling myself up.
A terrible wheezing sound escaped my throat every time I took a strangled breath. Coughing, I cried at the pain, holding my hand over my mouth. When I pulled my hand away, it was splattered with frothy blood. Panting, I lifted my eyes to Logan. He had already knelt to me, gathering me into his arms.

“I have to get you to the hospital,” he held me tightly against him. Violet
glanced at us before rushing from the house.

I tried to speak, my voice
harsh and missing in sentence segments. “I can’t breathe.”

“
He’s out,” West appeared in the doorway, looking at Logan. “Get her upstairs and give me your phone; I’m calling a doctor who will come for her,” he flipped Logan’s phone open, dialing from memory. “He will be discreet- but I need you to handle her dad.”

“I will. I won’t leave her.
What about him?” Logan gestured to the front yard, where West had dragged Troy only minutes before.

“I’m taking him through the fountain.”

“You’re going to blow up another fountain?” Logan asked
, narrowing his eyes. He held me tightly against his chest. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“No. I’m taking him to 1955. And I’m going to cut the fucking numbers off.”

I
cringed at a sudden cramp. “I’m not- leaving you,” I was losing my voice with every word; the second half of my sentence was a whisper.
My vocal chords are damaged.

“Violet is coming with me. You have to
go with Logan.
When you wake up, I’ll be here, baby. I promise you.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head emphatically. “
No. I’m coming.
”

Logan held me in his arms, glancing nervously out the door. “Are you sure he’s out?”

“Yes. He’s dead- for now. And Violet is still beating on him…,” West lowered his mouth to my forehead. “I’ll meet you here by morning.”

“
West-…,
”

“Oh God,” Logan held his fingers out from beneath
the back of my dress, staring at them in revulsion.

They were covered in blood.

I watched West’s self-control fade as he stared at Logan’s hands. Their faces moved in and out of focus, like the contacts in my eyes that would shift around, blurring my vision. Suddenly too tired to argue any more, I turned into Logan’s arms, their voices growing distant.

“She needs a hospital!”

“I’ll take her- go with Violet. See this through.”

“
West, don’t let her die.”

Blackness.

Music. I am floating on my slippered feet, naturally moving
on a floor filled with dancers to a melody in unison. Lavish costumes adorn each of us; my gown is the color of fresh snow, falling in waves down by body and ornamented with diamonds. A warm hand fills mine.

“
You dance,” West says, a playful grin tugging at his lips, “like you kiss.”

I gaze at him, my body tingling with excitement. “And how do I kiss?”

He steps forward and back to the stringed music, his fingers closing to entwine mine.

“Like you have kissed forever.”

I stop dancing, turning to him. “I would kiss you forever,” I say boldly, reaching for him on tip-toes. He backs away quickly.

“He’ll hav
e my head,” as he nods toward the throne, I lift my eyes and see Troy staring intently at us. I look back at West to see that his rebuke is half-hearted; his mouth remains upturned in a smirk. He leans forward ever so slightly. “But, little one… you may have the rest.”

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 West’s Pilot, lying across the back seat. The SUV was moving, and lights flickered in and out of the dark windows in a rhythmic pattern. Moaning, I turned on my side as a cramping pain began in my lower back and crept around to my abdomen.

“Hold on, baby,” West’s voice came from the driver’s seat. My head ached, my
throat felt somehow 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, my throat hoarse.

“I know,” He reached for me with one arm, his voice pained.
He found my bloodied hand, grasping it tightly. “Hold on… 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 them as we passed.

“No. It’s never happened, I can’t believe it would now,” he said firmly as the SUV accelerated.

“A lot of things have never happened,” I murmured, my thoughts falling over themselves in a confused hodgepodge of book passages from
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
. “It could be a blood clot… or infection,” my throat was sunken; my voice unfamiliar. “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!” He was carrying me through the darkness. The fountain was illuminated by bright, white spotlights. 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-…,”

“
Snow
… no water. West, there’s no water,” I cried, tears burning my eyes.

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 set an alarm through body, 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 it 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 was pulling me out of the fountain, lifting me up and 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. My stomach, however, began just under my breasts and protruded inches from my waist, stretching my bloody dress to the limit.