Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [159]
All I did know was that I could feel the darkness pressing like a hand about to crush us all. It was a heaviness in the air like before a thunderstorm, but worse, closer, harder to breathe through. Something bad was coming, and it was tied to the darkness. I wasn’t able to convince Doctor Evans that his patients were dead, but my urgency must have been persuasive because he did give permission for the two officers that were already at the hospital to guard inside the room instead of out. The only proof I had that there were cops inside the room was a hat lying on one of the chairs outside the door.
I wanted to go into the room myself, but by the time I got suited up in gown and mask it would be full dark. It was that close, like a trembling line. So I stood in the hall and pretended that I was okay with it, because there was nothing else I could do.
Since Officer Rigby and Bernardo were new, they got the standard lecture about not shooting inside an oxygen atmosphere. It would be bad, though it wouldn’t explode, which is what I thought it would have done. It would be the flash fire to end all flash fires, turning the room into a lower circle of hell for the few moments it took to use up all the oxygen or fuel in the room. But it wouldn’t explode in a shower of glass and plaster. Nothing too dramatic, just deadly.
Rigby asked, “And if they try to eat us, what are we supposed to do? Spit on them?”
“I don’t know,” Evans said. “All I can tell you is what you shouldn’t do, and you shouldn’t fire a gun into a room full of oxygen.”
Bernardo drew a knife from somewhere. He hadn’t bent down near his boot, which meant it was a different knife, and one the werewolf in the bar had missed. He held the blade up to the light, letting it gleam. “You cut them.”
Darkness fell like a lead curtain, almost clanging in my head like the roll of thunder. I waited for the door to the room to open. I waited for the screaming to start because that’s what I was expecting. Nothing happened. Then the pressure that had been building for hours vanished. It was as if something had swallowed it up. I was just suddenly standing in the hallway feeling light, empty, better. I didn’t understand the change, and I don’t like what I don’t understand.
We all waited for a few tense heartbeats, then I couldn’t stand it. I spilled a knife into my own hand and reached for the door. The door swung outward. I jumped back. The male nurse that I’d been introduced to earlier paused in the door staring at the naked blade in my hand.
He never took his eyes off me, but he talked to Evans. “Doctor, the patients are quiet, quieter than they’ve been all day. The police officers are wanting to know if they can step out of the room for a while.”
“The survivors are quieter than they’ve been all day?” I asked.
Ben the nurse nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
I took two steps back from the door, and let out the tension in my body in a long breath.
“Well, Ms. Blake?” Evans asked. “Can the officers come out?”
I shrugged and looked at Ramirez. “Ask him. He’s ranking officer on site. But truthfully, I guess so. Whatever I’ve been feeling seemed to fade when darkness fell. I don’t understand it.” I slid the knife back into its sheath. “I guess there’s not going to be a fight.”
“You sound disappointed,” Bernardo said. His knife had vanished to wherever he’d gotten it from.
I shook my head. “Not disappointed, just confused. I felt a great deal of power building for hours, and it just vanished. That much power doesn’t just vanish. It went somewhere. Apparently, not into the survivors, but it’s off somewhere tonight doing something.”
“Any ideas what it’s doing and where?” Ramirez asked.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
He turned to the doctor. “Tell the men they can come outside.”
Ben the nurse looked to Doctor Evans for confirmation. Evans nodded. The nurse ducked back inside, the door closing slowly behind him.
Evans turned to me. “Well, Ms. Blake, looks like you