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“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.”
