Chaos (10 page)

But she didn’t move. She only said, “I can’t help you, because you don’t understand what you’re trying to do. This isn’t a game. Time is not a toy to be played with. By changing one small thing, it could ripple outward and
disrupt the universe. Are you willing to take that chance? And what do you think will happen to your world? The safety of everyone you know would be gone, because you think you’re in love.”

“I
am
in love,” Luc corrected her. “And yes, it’s worth the risk. I’m not scared.” Luc hoped he was doing a good job of bluffing. He was deathly afraid. But he wouldn’t screw up. Failure was not an option. He would bring the universe back, restore it to what it had been before Corinthe died, in balance and intact.

Everyone wins
.

Tess shook her head as if she could read his thoughts. “She was fated to die. She accepted it, so why can’t you?”

“Fate isn’t everything,” Luc said. “You’re a Radical. You should know that better than me.” Luc was quiet for a second, fighting for the right words. “I made her a promise. I have to keep it.”

Tess sighed. For a second, she looked so tired, he almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

“I’m sorry,” Tess said. “Your journey must end here.”

She moved across the small clearing, her movements graceful but slow. Did the cold affect her, too? After all, he had learned from Rhys that a Radical was born in the fiery explosion of a star.

Luc twisted sharply to one side, then ducked between the trees and began to run.

He risked a glance over his shoulder. She was almost on top of him again. Shit. She was too fast. Just as she
reached for him, he faked left, then spun off to the right. Tess grunted in frustration and he took off again, cold burning his lungs, blood pounding in his head.

The mountain was closer than it looked, and all too soon he was approaching a wall of rock. Should he try to climb? A few feet ahead of him, he spotted a small overhang, like the entrance to a cave. Maybe he could take shelter there and fend her off—but no, then he’d be trapped. Before he could make a decision, Tess slammed into his back, sending them both sprawling into the snow. He felt her grab for his backpack and used the last of his strength to buck her off, sending her toppling over onto her back.

She was on her feet immediately, but so was he.

They squared off, neither giving an inch.

“Give me the book and I won’t hurt you,” Tess said.

Luc wiped his mouth and his hand came away red. A rock must have cut his face. He was too cold to feel it. There was nowhere to run. The slope behind him was steep and covered with heavy snow. He’d never be able to outrun her.

“I won’t.”

“I’m giving you one last chance—” Tess said, but the rest of her words were drowned out by a dull roaring, like an ocean crashing on a beach. She stiffened; a look of terror passed over her face.

Luc turned around. A hundred feet above them, an enormous sheet of snow was breaking free from the mountain. With a tremendous
crack
, it raced toward them,
a surging wave of snow, devouring everything in its path, snapping whole trees as if they were matchsticks.

The earth shook like no earthquake Luc has ever experienced. The sound was deafening.

Luc made a split-second decision. The overhang, and the small cave, was his only hope.

He dove forward, throwing himself into the small gap underneath the overhang. The cave was shallow but wide, plenty big enough for two people.

“Take my hand!” he shouted at Tess. But she didn’t move. She was frozen, her mouth open.

Snow began pouring over the ledge, rapidly blocking his vision. Luc protected his head. Thunder exploded around him. This had to be what the inside of hell sounded like. It went on for only half a minute, but it felt like hours before the ground stopped shaking and the air grew silent once again.

A thick layer of snow had piled in front of the ledge, leaving only a small gap through which Luc could see the sky. But it was enough. The stone ledge had kept him from being buried completely. He punched through the snow with his elbows until the opening was large enough to accommodate him, secured the backpack, then slithered out of the cave on his stomach.

Tess had disappeared.

“Tess?” Luc shouted. His voice echoed across the vast landscape. He trudged a little farther up the slope, then turned around, shielding his eyes, to see if he could spot her. But there was nothing but white.

Had she been buried alive? Even though she’d been trying to steal Rhys’s book, and probably would have killed him to get it, the idea made him feel queasy.

The entire upper quarter of the mountain had come off during the avalanche, just sloughed away. Instead of a peak, there was now a crater, open to the sky like a vast wound.

So. Not a mountain. A volcano.

Steam hissed from the opening at the top, unlike anything he’d ever seen. Colors, almost like those of the aurora borealis, twinkled above the crater. Could it be the opening to the Crossroad?

After taking one last look for Tess, Luc started trudging through the snow toward the summit. It wasn’t more than a football field’s length to the top, but his sneakers sank into the heavy drifts of snow, making each step difficult, and biting wind whipped down the slope, making it hard to take a breath. The wind battered his body, as if it were a conscious force, as if it were trying to prevent him from reaching the top. He forced himself to keep going, even though he could no longer feel his fingers and his ears ached from the cold. He refused to die in this bleak, lifeless world.

Near the summit, the wind changed. Warm, humid air rolled up from the crater, creating waves of white steam that hissed as they cooled and condensed abruptly into more snow.

Luc pushed the hood off his head. In front of him, colors swirled and danced in the steam. He ventured closer
to the crater’s edge, and saw that the colors emerged from a wide gap at the bottom of the depression. They looked stuck, almost, like streamers bound to something solid.

Could he be looking at some kind of tear in the Crossroad, maybe caused by the avalanche? It was as if the gap had created a path into the Crossroad where no path was supposed to be. But the crater was deep, and he didn’t know whether he could safely climb down its steep ledge and make it to the opening. Even if he could, he didn’t know if he would
fit
.

He remembered, suddenly, the first time he had ever ventured into the Crossroad. He’d been standing at the edge of a roof, terrified. Corinthe had been threatening him with a knife. Even then, she’d been the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. It seemed like an entire lifetime ago.

He was going to have to jump again—straight into the colors flashing toward the sky. He checked the straps of his backpack, then backed up several feet from the rim. He took a deep breath and felt the air burn his lungs. Now.

He started sprinting. But just before he sprang from the edge, his foot broke through a layer of ice and he tripped. Momentum propelled him forward. He slid over the edge of the crater and plummeted.

Instinctively, Luc covered his head and braced for impact. Except there was none. At the moment of collision, Luc simply passed
through
the ground as if it were no more than air.

He fell into a vast nothingness where wind howled and voices whispered, yet he couldn’t feel his own limbs. When he tried to move his arms, there was a disconnect between his mind and his body. He existed, but not in this reality.

A sound began, whether in his mind or somewhere around him, he couldn’t be sure. It shook the air, shook him all the way to the bone. Wind came up out of nowhere, and he was sucked into a vacuum that felt like it was tearing him apart.

It was the same as when he and Corinthe crossed through worlds: the unbearable howling winds, the relentless tearing at his body until he thought he would shatter. But under it all was the sense of familiarity. If he could make it through, there
was
something at the end of the pain.

Just when he thought he’d be ripped from limb to limb he was thrown into the Crossroad. Colors spun around him, twisting upward like a tornado, leaving him standing on trembling legs.

Luc regained solid footing. He stood. The voices, usually so loud, seemed like faint whispers now. He wondered, briefly, whether this meant he was getting less human. Mortals weren’t supposed to wander the Crossroad.

But he was tired of rules.

The archer was in the small flap pocket of his backpack. He gripped it in his hand and watched the figure spin. He needed guidance. Would it work this time? He
focused on Corinthe, her face, her eyes, the fiery yearning in his gut.

Time, he thought. Show me to the tunnels of time.

Instead, the tides around him swirled faster, more violently. It felt as though the universe was fighting him, and Luc struggled to keep his balance, to keep from panicking. He barely kept his grip on the archer. He clenched his teeth against the pain. Winds buffeted him sideways, turned him around in circles.

The tiny archer continued to spin wildly. There was no doorway, no ripple that might indicate a new world. It was all just colors and winds, an endless stream flowing in multiple directions.

The trinket was useless.

The Crossroad was useless.

Anger rose in him, swift and hot. He wouldn’t let the Unseen Ones win. All he wanted to do was save Corinthe. Why was the universe fighting him so hard? Love was supposed to triumph over everything. Wasn’t that what everyone always said?

So why the hell wasn’t it working for him?

The archer was still spinning. Enraged, Luc threw it.

And watched as, instead of disappearing, the tiny arrow
pierced
the shifting wall of color and hung there, trembling.

All at once, the winds quieted.

The colors stopped spinning.

It was silent.

The archer was stuck as if buried in bubble gum.
When Luc reached out and pulled it, long strands of fibrous color dripped from the tip of the tiny arrow. Black, inklike shadows dripped from the spot where the arrow had been embedded, as if the Crossroad were weeping.

Luc tucked the archer into his backpack and examined the tear. It was barely the size of a pinprick, but behind it, he could hear sounds—not whispers, but a faint humming, like the noise of some enormous generator. He stuck a finger through the hole and tugged, and the rip grew longer. Luc was repelled by the slow ooze of black liquid from the opening, but he didn’t stop.

The Crossroad, Corinthe had told him, ran everywhere, between all worlds.

So what ran behind the Crossroad?

When the opening was the width of his shoulders, Luc carefully maneuvered his head through it. Bright blue lights sizzled along tracks that reminded him of the sparks that rained down continuously in Kinesthesia.

The last time he and Corinthe had been there, the world had started to collapse around them. Luc wondered if it was even there anymore. Could the universe survive without its center?

Luc shook his head. This was not Kinesthesia; there was no gigantic clock, no grid, no river of metal.

There were just … wires. That was what they looked like, wires. Everywhere. They ran as far as he could see in both directions. Bursts of bright color zipped along them in rapid intervals.

The air was charged with electricity and the hair on
his arms stood all the way up. It was like the time he’d gone to the science museum in seventh grade and put his hands on a glowing static ball, but a thousand times that. Ten thousand. The pressure grew. It felt like his skin was crawling with a thousand bugs.

He wanted out.

But when he went to retreat, the opening gripped him, like a mouth closing. The Crossroad was
healing
itself, he realized with a sense of nausea; fibrous strands of color were weaving around him like skin regenerating, trapping him in place.

In the world beyond the Crossroad, the world of wires, Luc noticed thick cables knotted only a foot or so away. He plunged an arm through the hole and reached out to grab the nearest cable. It was as thick as his wrist. He checked his grip and heaved.

The cable snapped, sending off a waterfall of sparks. Luc smelled burning flesh and wondered, briefly, whether he was on fire. Then he realized he was smelling the Crossroad, the stink of the hole widening to release him, opening its jaw.

A million pinpricks of light pierced Luc’s body, until the pain became too much, and he simply let go.

Jasmine slowly sat up. She was in the middle of the rotunda, surrounded by debris: tumbled columns, mounds of plaster and Sheetrock. The last thing she remembered was falling. She knew she’d hit her head, but when she felt around for a bump, she found nothing. She didn’t even have a headache.

Ford was gone. Her attackers were gone, too. Maybe Ford had chased them off?

“Are you okay?”

Jasmine looked up at the figure that spoke. An older woman with graying hair looked down at her, her face filled with concern. On her jacket was a tag that said
RED CROSS VOLUNTEER
.