In Death 23 - Born in Death

thought, and with blood. With their mothers screaming through it.
    It was a tough start.
    The wall angled, and she followed it as the box narrowed into a tunnel. Not unlike the morgue, she noted. Birth and death, the beginning and the end of the human journey.
    Angling again, she saw Mavis stretched out on the floor.
    “Hey! Hey!” But as she rushed forward, Mavis smiled, waved at her.
    “I’m good, I’m fine. Next to magolicious. Just cooking the bun ’till it’s done. You better go help the others.”
    “What others? Where are they?”
    “That’s the big problem, right? You gotta fix it so you can get back before I pop. You remember all the stuff from the class?”
    “I got an A.”
    “Knew I could count on you. B-day’s coming, Dallas. Don’t be late. Tandy’s counting on you, too.”
    A white stork flew overhead, a white sack swinging from its beak. Eve ducked and cursed.
    “There goes another one!” Mavis laughed. “Maybe it’s Tandy’s. Better go after it, better hurry. Could be a COD!”
    Eve started off at a jog, glanced back. Mavis was standing on her head, her feet propped on the white wall. “I’m keeping it in the oven until you finish.”
    “That can’t be right,” Eve muttered, but chased after the stork.
    In a cube built into the wall, Natalie Copperfield was tied to a desk. Her eyes were blackened and bloody and running with tears. There was a blue robe belt wrapped tight around her throat.
    “It won’t add up,” she sobbed. “It won’t come out right. I have to make it right. That’s my job. They killed me for it,” she said to Eve, “but it still has to add up.”
    “You have to give me more than that.”
    “It’s all right there, all right there in the numbers that won’t add up. Haven’t you found her yet? Haven’t you found her?”
    There was a door. Eve yanked at it, then kicked it in when it refused to give way. Inside was a white room, and Tandy, strapped to a labor/ delivery chair like the one used as a demo in the birthing class.
    Blood stained the sheets, her face was shiny with sweat. Her engorged belly rippled obscenely.
    “The baby’s coming,” she panted out. “I can’t stop it.”
    “Where’s the doctor? Where’s the midwife?”
    “I can’t stop it,” she repeated. “Hurry, hurry.”
    Even as Eve ran forward, Tandy vanished.
    The floor opened under her feet. As she fell, the babies were crying, the women screaming.
    She landed hard, heard and felt the bone snap in her arm. The room was cold, so cold, and washed with a dirty red light.
    “No.” Shuddering, she pushed to her hands and knees. “No.”
    He was lying in a pool of his own blood, the same blood that dripped from her hands, from the blade of the little knife she still gripped.
    And as she watched, her father turned his head, and those dead eyes smiled at her. “It always comes back to the beginning, little girl.”
    She came out of it on a muffled cry to find herself wrapped in Roarke’s arms.
    “Dreaming, that’s all. You’re all right. I’m here.”
    “It’s okay.” She drew in his scent to steady herself. “I’m okay. It wasn’t bad.”
    “You’re shaking.” He ordered the lights on low, and the fire on so the room glowed softly, and the flames burst into life in the hearth.
    “It was just mostly weird. Weird and creepy.”
    “Dancing numbers?” He kept his voice light, but held her close and tight. “Flying babies?”
    “Not this time.” She ordered herself to relax, just relax against him. “Tangling up my cases,” she said after she told him of the dream. “And ended with the big finish. Bastard always manages to get in there.”
    “Lie back down now. Let it go.”
    She let him draw her back, let herself curl in. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, or to let it go. “There was this sense of urgency. I had to find Tandy, but even when I did, I couldn’t get to her. And there was Natalie Copperfield, and all I could think was that she deserved better from me. She’s trapped there, with those damn numbers, until I can fix it. Add it up. Make it come out right.”
    “No point in telling you you’re spread too thin.”
    “No, no point. Sorry.”
    “Then let me remind you that you’re not alone in that white room, that white tunnel, or even in that goddamned room in Dallas. Not anymore.”
    She tilted her head so she could see his face, lifted her hand so she could touch it. “Thank God.”
    He kissed her forehead. “Well now,