Passion (3 page)

“I could kil you,” the woman said, breathing heavily as she rushed toward Luce and threw her arms around her.

For such a frail-looking woman, her embrace was strong. The warmth of another body pressing into Luce after so much intense cold made her almost want to cry. She hugged back hard.

“Grandma?” she whispered, her lips close to the woman’s ear, somehow knowing that was who the woman was.

“Of al the nights I get o work to nd you gone,” the woman said. “Now you’re skipping around in the middle of the street like a lunatic?

Did you even go to work today? Where is your sister?”

There was the rumbling in the sky again. It sounded like a bad storm moving closer. Moving fast. Luce shivered and shook her head. She didn’t know.

“Aha,” the woman said. “Not so carefree now.” She squinted at Luce, then pushed her away to get a closer look. “My God, what are you wearing?”

Luce dgeted as her past life’s grandmother gaped at her jeans and ran her knobby ngers over the but ons of Luce’s annel shirt. She grabbed Luce’s short, tangled ponytail. “Sometimes I think you are as crazy as your father, may he rest in peace.”

“I just—” Luce’s teeth were chat ering. “I didn’t know it was going to be so cold.” The woman spat on the snow to show her disapproval. She peeled o her overcoat. “Take this before you catch your death.” She bundled the coat roughly around Luce, whose ngers were half frozen as she struggled to but on it. Then her grandmother untied the scarf from her neck and wrapped it around Luce’s head.

A great boom in the sky startled both of them. Now Luce knew it wasn’t thunder. “What is that?” she whispered.

The old woman stared at her. “The war,” she mut ered. “Did you lose your wits along with your clothes? Come now. We must go.” As they waded down the snowy street, over the rough cobbles and the tram tracks set into them, Luce realized that the city wasn’t empty after al . Few cars were parked along the road, but occasional y, down the darkened side streets, she heard the whinnies of carriage horses waiting for orders, their frosty breaths clot ing the air. Silhouet ed bodies scampered across rooftops. Down an al ey, a man in a torn overcoat helped three smal children through the hatched doors of a basement.

At the end of the narrow street, the road opened onto a broad, tree-lined avenue with a wide view of the city. The only cars parked here were military vehicles. They looked old-fashioned, almost absurd, like relics in a war museum: soft-top jeeps with giant fenders, bone-thin steering wheels, and the Soviet hammer and sickle painted onto the doors. But aside from Luce and her grandmother, there were no people on this street. Everything—except for the awful rumbling in the sky—was ghostly, eerily quiet.

In the distance, she could see a river, and far across it, a great building. Even in the darkness, she could make out its elaborate tiered spires and ornate onion-shaped domes, which seemed familiar and mythic at the same time. It took a moment to sink in—and then fear shot through Luce.

She was in Moscow.

And the city was a war zone.

Black smoke rose in the gray sky, marking the pockets of the city that had already been hit: to the left of the vast Kremlin, and just behind it, and again in the distance to the far right. There was no combat on the streets, no sign that enemy soldiers had crossed into the city yet on foot. But the ames licking the charred buildings, the incendiary smel of war everywhere, and the threat of more to come were somehow even worse.

This was by far the most messed-up thing Luce had ever done in her life—probably in any of her lives. Her parents would kil her if they knew where she was. Daniel might never speak to her again.

But then: What if they didn’t even have the chance to be furious with her? She could die, right here in this war zone.

Why had she done this?

Because she’d had to. It was hard to unearth that smal hint of pride in the midst of her panic. But it must have been there somewhere.

She’d stepped through. On her own. Into a distant place and a faraway time, into the past she needed to understand. This was what she’d wanted. She’d been pushed around like a chess piece long enough.

But what was she supposed to do now?

She picked up her pace and held tight to her grandmother’s hand. Strange, this woman had no real sense of what Luce was going through, no real idea of who she even was, and yet the tug of her dry grip was the only thing keeping Luce moving.

“Where are we going?” Luce asked as her grandmother yanked her down another darkened street. The cobblestones tapered o and the road became unpaved and slippery. The snow had soaked through the canvas of Luce’s tennis shoes, and her toes were starting to burn with the cold.

“To col ect your sister, Kristina.” The old woman scowled. “The one who works nights digging army trenches with her bare hands so you

“To col ect your sister, Kristina.” The old woman scowled. “The one who works nights digging army trenches with her bare hands so you can get your beauty rest. Remember her?”

Where they stopped, there was no streetlamp to light the road. Luce blinked a few times to help her eyes adjust. They were standing in front of what looked like a very long ditch, right in the middle of the city.

There must have been a hundred people there. Al of them bundled up to their ears. Some were down on their knees, digging with shovels. Some were digging with their hands. Some stood as if frozen, watching the sky. A few soldiers carted o heavy loads of earth and rock in splintery wheelbarrows and farm carts to add to the rubble barricade at the end of the street. Their bodies were hidden under thick army-issue wool coats that bil owed out around their knees, but beneath their steel hats, their faces were as gaunt as any of the civilians’.

Lucinda understood that they were al working together, the men in uniform and the women and children, turning their city into a fortress, doing anything they could, down to the very last minute, to keep the enemy tanks out.

“Kristina,” her grandmother cal ed, the same notes of panic-washed love in her voice as when she’d been looking for Luce.

A girl appeared at their side almost instantly. “What took you so long?”

Tal and thin, with dark strands of hair escaping from under the porkpie hat on her head, Kristina was so beautiful, Luce had to swal ow a lump in her throat. She recognized the girl as family right away.

Seeing Kristina reminded Luce of Vera, another past life’s sister. Luce must have had a hundred sisters across time. A thousand. Al of them would have gone through something similar. Sisters and brothers and parents and friends whom Luce must have loved, then lost. None of them had known what was coming. Al of them had been left behind to grieve.

Maybe there was a way to change that, to make it easier on the people who’d loved her. Maybe that was part of what Luce could do in her past lives.

The great boom of something exploding sounded across town. Close enough that the ground rocked under Luce’s feet and her right eardrum felt like it was split ing. On the corner, air-raid sirens started going of .

“Baba.” Kristina took hold of her grandmother’s arm. She was near tears. “The Nazis—they’re here, aren’t they?” The Germans. Luce’s rst time stepping through time on her own and she’d landed smack in World War I . “They’re at acking Moscow?” Her voice wobbled. “Tonight?”

“We should have left town with the others,” Kristina said bit erly. “Now it is too late.”

“And abandoned your mother and your father and your grandfather, too?” Baba shook her head. “Left them alone in their graves?”

“Bet er we should join them in the cemetery?” Kristina spat back. She reached for Luce, squeezing her arm. “Did you know about the raid?

You and your kulak friend? Is that why you didn’t come to work this morning? You were with him, weren’t you?” What did her sister think Luce could possibly have known? Who would she have been with?

Who but Daniel?

Of course. Luschka must be with him right now. And if her own family members were confusing that Luschka with Luce …

Her chest constricted. How much time did she have left before she died? What if Luce could find Luschka before it happened?

“Luschka.”

Her sister and grandmother were staring at her.

“What’s wrong with her tonight?” Kristina asked.

“Let’s go.” Baba scowled. “You think the Moscovitches are going to hold open their basement forever?” The long drone of a ghter plane’s propel ers sounded over them in the sky. Close enough that when Luce looked up, the dark swastika painted on the underside of its wings was clear. It sent a shiver through her. Then another boom rocked the city, and the air grew caustic with dark smoke. They’d hit something nearby. Two more massive explosions made the ground shudder beneath her feet.

It was chaos on the street. The crowd at the trenches was disappearing, everyone scat ering up a dozen narrow streets. Some hustled down the stairs of the metro station on the corner to wait out the bombs underground; others disappeared into dark doorways.

A block away, Luce caught a glimpse of someone running: a girl, about her age, in a red hat and a long wool coat. She turned her head for just a second before she sprinted on. But it was long enough for Luce to know.

There she was.

Luschka.

She wrestled free of Baba’s arm. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Luce took a deep breath and ran down the street, straight into the roiling smoke, toward the heaviest bombing.

“Are you crazy?” Kristina yel ed. But they didn’t fol ow her. They would have had to be crazy themselves.

Luce’s feet were numb as she tried to run through the calf-high snow on the sidewalk. When she reached the corner where she’d seen her red-hat ed past self dash by, she slowed. Then she sucked in her breath.

A building that took up half of the city block directly in front of her had caved in. White stone was streaked with black ash. A re churned deep inside the crater in the building’s side.

The explosion had spat out heaps of unrecognizable debris from inside the building. The snow was streaked with red. Luce recoiled until she realized that the red streaks were not blood but shreds of red silk. It must have been a tailor’s shop. Several badly singed racks of clothes were scat ered in the street. A mannequin lay on its side in a ditch. It was on re. Luce had to cover her mouth with her grandmother’s scarf to keep from choking on the fumes. Everywhere she stepped, shat ered glass and stone cut into the snow.

She should turn back, nd the grandmother and sister who would help her get to shelter, but she couldn’t. She had to nd Luschka. She’d never been so close to one of her past selves before. Luschka might be able to help her understand why Luce’s own lifetime was di erent.

Why Cam had shot a starshot into her reflection, thinking it was her, and told Daniel, “It was a bet er end for her.” A bet er end than what?

She slowly turned around, trying to spot the flash of the red hat in the night.

There.

The girl was running downhil toward the river. Luce started running, too.

They ran at precisely the same pace. When Luce ducked at the sound of an explosion, Luschka ducked, too—in a weird echo of Luce’s own movement. And when they reached the riverbank, and the city came into view, Luschka froze into the exact same rigid stance as Luce herself.

Fifty yards in front of Luce, her mirror image began to sob.

So much of Moscow was burning. So many homes were being leveled. Luce tried to fathom the other lives being destroyed across the city tonight, but they felt distant and unreachable, like something she’d read about in a history book.

The girl was on the move again. Running so fast Luce couldn’t have caught her if she’d wanted to. They ran around giant craters cut into the cobblestone road. They ran past burning buildings, crackling with the awful racket a re makes when it spreads to a new target. They ran past smashed, overturned military trucks, blackened arms hanging out at the sides.

past smashed, overturned military trucks, blackened arms hanging out at the sides.

Then Luschka hooked left down a street and Luce couldn’t see her anymore.

Adrenaline kicked in. Luce pressed forward, her feet pounding harder, faster on the snowy street. People only ran this fast when they were desperate. When something bigger than them spurred them on.

Luschka could only be running toward one thing.

“Luschka—”

His voice.

Where was he? For a moment, Luce forgot her past self, forgot the Russian girl whose life was in danger of ending at any moment, forgot that this Daniel wasn’t her Daniel, but then—

Of course he was.

He never died. He had always been there. He was always hers and she was always his. Al she wanted was to nd his arms, to bury herself in their grasp. He would know what she should be doing; he would be able to help her. Why had she doubted him before?

She ran, pul ed in the direction of his voice. But she couldn’t see Daniel anywhere. Nor Luschka. A block away from the river, Luce stopped short in a barren intersection.

Her breath felt strangled in her frozen lungs. A cold, throbbing pain tunneled deep inside her ears, and the icy pinpricks stabbing her feet made standing stil unbearable.

But which way should she go?

Before her was a vast and empty lot, l ed with rubble and cordoned o from the street by sca olding and an iron fence. But even in the darkness, Luce could tel that this was an older demolition, not something destroyed by a bomb in the air raids.

It didn’t look like much, just an ugly, abandoned sinkhole. She didn’t know why she was stil standing in front of it. Why she’d stopped running after Daniel’s voice—

Until she gripped the fence, blinked, and saw a flash of something bril iant.

A church. A majestic white church l ing this gaping hole. A huge triptych of marble arches on the front façade. Five golden spires extending high into the sky. And inside: rows of waxed wooden pews as far as the eye could see. An altar at the top of a white ight of stairs.

And al the wal s and high arched ceilings covered with gorgeously ornate frescoes. Angels everywhere.