Page 106 of Across Eternity

She heads for the stairs, but Henri, Marie and I remain absolutely still, stunned speechless. Asking us to crawl out a manhole and run with the children in the middle of the day is tantamount to suicide. We need a car or we’ll never make it. Marie presses her hands to her stomach and swallows hard.

“I can do it,” she whispers with tears in her eyes. “I’ll get us the truck. Meet me at the Pont de l’Alma in five minutes.”

Before I can ask what she means, her clothes fall to the ground and she is gone.

“No,” I whisper after her. I’m too late. I doubted her, all those times she insisted she would give up everything on behalf of the prophecy, but she may have done just that. If she isn’t carrying a time traveler, she won’t be pregnant when we see her next.

“Sarah,” Henri says, putting two guns in his waistband. “We need to go.”

He sweeps Lucien up in one arm and Cece in the other and heads for the stairs. Charlotte and I are at his heels.

We reach the basement just as the door upstairs opens and the floor above us echoes with the sound of stomping boots. I stand frozen, listening.

We cannot beat her. If there was time, I could go find out how she knows about us and perhaps stop her. But there’s no way I can do that now.

And this is why the prophecy matters, why so many people were willing to die for it—because no matter what we do here and now, she can keep going back, tracing us through previous weeks and years to catch us unaware. We escape today and eventually she’ll show up somewhere in our past—Nanterre or even Saint Antoine, that first blissful summer with Henri—and destroy us.

This is why my daughter needs to exist. So she can bring into the world something with the power to stop all of it. Until it happens, we are endlessly vulnerable.

“I have to kill her,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “No, just go. Get into the tunnel. I’ll hold them off until you’re gone.”

“It won’t matter, Henri!” I cry. “Listen to me! Until she’s dead she’ll just keep going backward to find us.”

He holds my face. “There’s not time for that right now,” he says. “Just get ahead of her. And if that fails, save yourself. Save our daughter.” His lips press to mine. “This isn’t the time for weakness, little thief. You were chosen to bring her into the world for a reason. Show the universe it hasn’t made a bad choice.”

“Henri—” I cry, wanting to beg him to consider any other way.

He stops me, kissing me hard, one last time. “I love you,” he says. “Wherever the other side is, I’ll be waiting for you there.” He lifts me into the tunnel and hands me Cece.

I allow myself a single, final moment to take in his face, and he holds my gaze until I go, scooting backward through the tunnel as fast as I can. I push up the manhole cover and climb out, hearing the sound of gunfire as I lean down to pull the children to me. Henri, alone, is facing whatever is behind us, and I have no way to help him—no weapon, no time. I could jump back a day and try to kill the time traveler responsible for all this, but the children would be dead before I’d succeeded.

“Take Lucien’s hand,” I tell Charlotte, with tears running down my face. I lift Cece in my arms and we begin to run, cutting through alleyways toward the Seine.

It’s all futile, though. I don’t know what the time traveler is after, but if she doesn’t get it, she will just go back and do things differently. She’s been tracing me, or us, for years, waiting for the right moment to strike, and now that she’s found it she isn’t going to give up. She’ll just send the police to Genevieve’s sooner. She can go back endlessly, and one of those times, she’ll succeed.

It’s still early, and only one truck sits down at Pont de l’Alma—a fish truck. I’m not sure if it’s the truck Marie promised or some fisherman loading up his daily catch, but I run toward it anyway.

Edouard and Marie step out, and my stomach drops.

Marie is no longer pregnant.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. She shakes her head, trying not to cry, and takes Cece from me, while Edouard lifts Lucien into the back of the truck and climbs in after him.

I hug Charlotte tight and bury my head in her hair. “I have to go back to take care of some things. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“Please, Mama,” she begs, clinging to me. “You said you wouldn’t leave. Let me stay with you!”

“I know,” I say, choking on a sob. “But first I need to make sure things are safe for us, and I need you to be brave.”

She clings harder. “I don’t want you to go,” she weeps. “I don’t want you to go back there.”

It all feels wrong. It feels wrong that I’m breaking my promise. It feels wrong that I am asking so much of her when she’s so small. “Charlotte, I—”

Suddenly, a shot is fired. It pings off the back of the truck and ricochets into the grass. My head jerks upward. Soldiers are firing on us from the bridge, and the time traveler stands on the hillside, watching it unfold. I swing my back to them, protecting Charlotte. “Get in the truck!” I scream, trying to pull her hands off me. She is crying, clinging hard as if she can protect me. I feel fire in my shoulder, a pain so searing I nearly drop her.

Her grip loosens and I thrust her toward the back of the truck, into Edouard’s arms. That’s when I realize she’s no longer fighting, no longer moving. Her eyes are open, sightless, her dress soaked in blood. A small hole in the center of her chest where the bullet entered, the same bullet that went through my shoulder.