Chaos (Lanie Bross) - Lanie Bross Page 0,55

second she forgot about the Executor still gripping her, and thought only about Ford—what would happen to Ford?—forgot even about the blade of a knife at her throat. Her blood was filled with tingling warmth. She was flying. She felt alive, at one with something greater than anything she knew.

Just as quickly, the terror came rushing back. The world didn’t just evaporate. People didn’t step through doorways into other worlds. It was the stuff of movies, of science fiction. Wind howled around them, and Jasmine felt the Executor’s grip loosen. Earlier, she had just wanted to escape. Now she was terrified that the Executor would let go and leave her in this nothing place, with its shifting colors and its formlessness.

Then the Executor’s grip tightened and she wrenched Jasmine sideways. It felt as though they were falling into a bottomless abyss, even though Jas counted only two seconds in her head.

When they hit solid ground, the jolt knocked Jas flat and the Executor temporarily released her hold. Jas had lost her breath. She gasped soundlessly, found her lungs shuttered as a window, useless. Above her was a rose-colored sunset, a sky littered with stars. A sun, a sky, and damp grass beneath her: Jas knew this was her chance to escape.

In the time it took the girl to stand, Jasmine was already sprinting. Her breath came back, finally, along with the hammering of her heart against her ribs. There was a path that led off into a grove of trees, and Jasmine followed it blindly, not daring to look back. She had no idea where she was, but she knew instinctively she was not home. Not in her world. The air was too sweet and all the wrong texture—like a spoonful of honey. The birdsong was different, and the light was wrong, too. It was entirely possible that she was running straight into danger. But the Executor would kill her if she didn’t escape.

Jasmine pushed through the dense foliage, smacking aside huge leaves and flowers the size of dinner plates. Plants she had never seen grew up over her head, interwoven like long fingers, with leaves as wide as her body and large fragrant flowers drooping down like giant bells.

The girl was gaining on her. Jas’s heartbeat felt like a dance track remixed all wrong—too crazy, arrhythmic. Jas was fast, but the girl was faster. Hurling herself into a place of thick growth, ignoring the scratches of branches and thorns, Jasmine crouched behind a heavy wall of green, willing her racing heart to slow down, willing herself to breathe silently.

After only twenty seconds, the Executor darted past, moving so quickly she was practically a blur, her long hair streaming behind her. As soon as her footsteps faded, Jasmine counted to twenty, then emerged carefully back onto the pathway and ran back the way she had come. There had to be a way out of this place.

The path split forty feet ahead. Jasmine didn’t remember reaching a fork—maybe she hadn’t been paying attention—and went left. After another minute, Jas spotted the shimmering of a river that wound its way across the horizon and reflected all the colors of the sunset sky above them. She knew she had not passed a stream, but a sense of déjà vu swelled up, so swift and fierce that she stumbled. Why did this place suddenly seem so familiar? It tickled the back of her mind, a familiarity in the soft purplish glow, as if she were entering a childhood bedroom.

She took a hesitant step forward, and then another. Some force seemed to be guiding her along, one that she couldn’t resist.

She knew this place. She knew she knew this place. For the first time she noticed that the world around her—the very air—seemed to be vibrating, pulsing to a rhythm that called out to her, made her own heartbeat slow in response.

She heard something then—a disturbance on the wind, a footstep. She had to move. There was a narrow dirt path on her right, half as wide as the one she’d been traveling, winding up toward some distant high point where she could just see a gleam of white. She started running again. Her legs felt strangely numb, sluggish, as though there were weights attached to her ankles. She longed to return to the river, to lie down, to rest.

Then the Executor slammed into her from behind. They both fell to the ground. Jas got a mouthful of grass. She tried to roll the Executor