Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(20)
There she was, standing on the streets of Zhabei—in the north of Shanghai’s city center, surrounded by carnage. Her feet rooted to the concrete, legs impossibly heavy. An all-consuming feeling of “Go! Go! Go!” screamed louder inside her each time this dream sequence started, slapped four years into the past for the end to play out differently, taking every fear she had imagined and amplifying them tenfold.
The monsters were ambling closer. In her hand, her lighter felt like it would burn through her skin, searing right to bone.
“We must move fast,” she heard herself say, warped and distant, as if it were coming from the skies instead of her own throat. “Do you understand me?”
Roma always materialized next to her at that moment, but standing farther than he had been in reality. Her panic surged; she was terrified that he wouldn’t catch her signal when she pointed toward the drain covering three paces away, that Dimitri might spot her gesture instead, catch on to her plan, and take the same way out. They couldn’t leave unless he was gone. Every bit of havoc he had wrought in the city needed to be burned to the ground.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Sometimes, in the dream, she remembered that Roma had been holding her hand, squeezing her fingers to communicate his encouragement. Sometimes she didn’t, and it wasn’t until the moment she threw the lighter that her memories reminded her it was Roma who had tugged her forward first, already moving while Juliette instinctively waited to watch her lighter make contact with the vaccine bags. There was no time. If Roma had been a second slower in tugging the drain covering aside; if Juliette had hesitated before shoving Roma through, yelling “Go!”; if Roma hadn’t stubbornly reached for her elbow while falling so that she was dragged through with him, the two of them landing hard in the sewer grates just as the explosion tore free… then they wouldn’t have made it out.
In this dream, Juliette hadn’t thought to push Roma through first. And in that second of delay, as he turned back to look at her…
Juliette jerked awake, a trail of tears already streaming down her cheeks. For a moment, the unfamiliar environment sent a wave of alarm into her body, half-conscious deliriousness slowing her comprehension. Then she felt an arm tighten around her waist and a pressure on her shoulder. Roma, nudging closer from behind, setting his chin upon her.
“Darling Juliette,” he said drowsily. “Are you crying?”
Her alarm started to ease, awareness flooding back. They were sleeping in the living room, tucked among the cushions on the sofa. Yulun and Mila were in the bedroom because they were being pursued by dangerous people, and in this scramble to keep them safe, Juliette was thinking about the past again, and thinking about the past always brought the dreams.
“I’m not crying,” Juliette sniffed, turning on the cushions so that she could face him.
Roma hadn’t opened his eyes. Somehow he still managed to raise his hand and brush away the dampness on her cheeks with perfect accuracy.
“You’re allowed to cry,” he said, his eyes still closed, voice husky and scratchy. “I cry all the time.”
“That you do.”
They hadn’t drawn the blinds when they went to sleep, too tired to do anything except collapse. Cloud-covered moonlight streamed through the windows, illuminating shapes and outlines in the living room. Juliette, with a soft exhale, slid a little lower along the sofa so that she could tuck herself against Roma’s chest.
With that terrible scene still fresh in her mind’s eye, she knew there was a chance it would drag her back the moment she dropped her guard. But the hour was clearly too early—or late, depending on the standard they were judging by—to rise for the day and shake off her dreams, so she squeezed her eyes shut again, holding Roma tighter and focusing on the steady thrum of his heartbeat under her ear. He smoothed his hand from her waist to her arm in response, tracing lazy lines upon her skin. As simple as the gesture was, her breathing slowed instinctively, following the up-down pace of the motions.
“I had the dream again,” Juliette whispered into his shirt.
“The explosion?”
“Yes.”
“What happened this time?”
“I lost you.” She breathed in, and a hitch stole her breath, snagged in her throat, turned everything sour. “In all the worst ones, I always lose you.”
When they’d hit the sewer, it had sounded like the world was caving in. The metal walls shook until Juliette feared the very structure would collapse on them, dirt and dust raining down while the heat of the blast blew through the open drain covering. Her mind barely felt coherent. She was half convinced that she had died and this was the underworld, the sound of trickling water and rancid smells running under the grates that were pressed into the left side of her body. She didn’t know when she had hit her head, but blood was trickling down her brow and getting into her eye.
The shaking continued for a short eternity. Then: silence.
“Juliette,” Roma had breathed, lifting his head cautiously. He had cuts along his cheek, and deliriously, Juliette reached out to run her finger against the deepest one, horrified at the slash of red, as if that was their most pressing problem. “Juliette, we need to go.”
“What?” she said, barely registering his words. Her ears were ringing terribly. Each sound in the real world echoed twice and then got eaten by a buzzing in her head.