The Fifth Day
Page 36
He looked behind him, hoping that the space there was an exit from the temple, at least a thread of a hope for escape. It was a mere alcove, barely four feet deep. The back wall was blank, dark brown stone, different from the light marble from which the rest of the temple was constructed. But there was no escape that way. He was trapped.
Diana pulled herself free of the curtain, and stood. She took a step back, and grabbed the heavy wooden staff from the altar, the only weapon still within reach. Her black hair was in disarray, her eyes smoldering with rage. She advanced, pointing the end of the staff toward him.
She’s going to spear me with that thing,. That’s going to hurt way more than an arrow through the heart.
Once again, he backed up, as she prodded him forward with the blunt end of the staff, her face twisted with anger.
His back and his butt touched the wall. He expected the cool roughness of stone against his skin, an unrelenting solidity that would be an incongruous coda to the dreamlike worlds into which he had fallen. Instead, behind him was a springy, smooth surface, unlike anything he’d ever felt. It was a little like plastic, a little like water, and a little like the surface of a trampoline he and his siblings had played on as kids. He pressed himself into it, and it gave, stretching like elastic.
“A portal?” she said, and her upper lip curled in a snarl. “I knew you were lying.”
He reached back into it, and it flexed against the palms of his hands. “A portal to where?”
“You can’t get out that way!” she screamed at him. “My prey never escapes!”
She lunged forward, aiming the staff at his heart. He grabbed it, held it, his muscles straining, and looked into her eyes. And for a moment they were perfectly balanced, immobile.
“This one does,” he said, and launched himself backwards. The membrane tore, like a balloon bursting, and he was blown from one world to another by a shriek of futile anger. He almost pulled her through with him, but at the last moment let go of the staff, and she teetered on the edge, and then recoiled back into the sunlit groves and hillsides of Yesod. The air around him exploded into fragments, abrading his skin like shrapnel, and he landed on his back on some hard, dry surface, with the wind shrieking in his ears.
And the curtain from the temple, sucked through the portal behind him, twisted down through the air and settled over his prone body like a shroud.
Excerpt from Sephirot copyright © 2016 by Gordon Bonnet
GIL MILLER gives you a front row seat to all the action in SPREE, the tale of a cross-country crime wave perpetrated by the dumbest—and maybe the luckiest—criminals ever to cross paths with the FBI.
“A tour de force of epic proportions. Miller leaves you wrung out and breathless, asking that age old question—what would I do if this were me?”
—Pamela Foster
Author of THE PERFECT VICTIM