Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [725]
The nurse just stared at me, unable to speak or afraid to. Maybe it was the gun, or maybe not all the blood had washed away in the sprinklers. I raised my voice above the noise, “Is it on this floor?”
She just nodded. She was mumbling something over and over. I had to lean into her to understand it. “It’s in the nursery. It’s in the nursery. It’s in the nursery.”
I didn’t think my adrenaline could get any higher. I was wrong. I could suddenly feel the blood rushing through my body, feel my heart like a painful thing in my chest. I opened the door, scanning the hallway with the Browning. Nothing moved. The corridor stretched long and empty with too many closed doors for comfort. The fire alarm was still screaming, making my skin tight with the noise. But even over the screech of the alarm I could hear the babies . . . crying . . . screaming.
I slipped the phone out of my pocket, hit the button he’d told me to hit earlier, and started jogging down the hallway towards the sounds. Ramirez answered it in the middle of the first ring. “Anita?”
“I’m on maternity. It’s the 14th floor. A nurse says the thing is in the nursery.” I was at the first corner. I threw myself against the far wall, but didn’t really stop. I’m usually more cautious around corners, but the crying was getting closer, more piteous.
“I’m on my way,” Ramirez said.
I hit the button that cut us off, but still had it in my hand when I came around the next corner. There was a body pushed through a pane of wired safety glass. I could tell it was a man, but that was about all. The face looked like hamburger. I stepped on a stethoscope on the floor below him. Doctor or nurse. I didn’t check for a pulse. If he was alive, I didn’t know how to help him. If he was dead, it didn’t matter. One last door, then a long expanse of window. But I didn’t need to see the long window to know it was the nursery. I could hear the babies crying. Even over the fire alarm the sound of those panicked cries made my heart flutter, made me want to run and help them. A hard wiring response that I hadn’t even known I had made me reach for the door. I still had the phone in my left hand, and made one attempt to shove it in my pocket. The bite on my left hand made me awkward. The phone slipped, and I let it fall to the floor.
The handle turned, but the door stopped just inches open. I put my shoulder into it, and realized it was a body, an adult body. I backed off and hit it again, moving it by painful inches. There was a woman screaming, not just the babies. I couldn’t open the door. Dammit!
Then the window crashed outward in a spray of glass and a body. A woman hit the ground and lay there sprawled and bleeding. I left the wedged door and went for the window. There were shards of glass like small swords on the bottom of the break. But I’d taken falls in Judo higher than this. I’d practiced falling for years. I glanced in to check one thing. The herd of little plastic cribs was pushed to either side. I had room. I took a running leap at it and threw myself over the broken glass, rolling as I fell. I only had one free hand to slap the floor with and take the impact of the fall, but I wanted the gun in my hand ready to fire. I hit the floor, and the force of my blow, the jump, whatever, was still there, still rolling me. I used it to come to my feet before I even knew what was in the room.
I didn’t so much see what was happening as take pictures of isolated things. I registered the overturned cribs: a tiny, tiny baby lying on the floor like a broken doll, the center of its body eaten away, like the center sucked out of a piece of candy; cribs still standing upright splattered with blood, some with tiny twisted bodies inside, some empty except for the blood; then in the far corner was the monster.
It held a tiny blanket-wrapped