Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,39
couldn’t move, and even if she could have moved, she couldn’t see where to move to. She felt her whole body shuddering with every panicked heartbeat, as if her body was rattling to bits.
The vision of the night her whole family died rose up in front of her; she could see the baleful sparks at the bottom of the holes that thing had instead of eyes glaring at her. Sparks of light, like the ones here, in the gym. The thing was here, with her, the thing that had killed her family! It was here, and it was looking for her, it had come to finish the job and it had brought a whole mob of friends!
Her throat ached, her chest ached, and it felt like her lungs were going to explode. She couldn’t get any air, and yet she was panting as if she had just finished a kendo bout with Dylan.
Someone screamed, shrill, high, piercing the darkness.
Now at last a scream burst out of her, joining the other screams all around her, triggered by the first person to cry out. And instantly, everyone else in the room was shrieking in the same terror.
Her knees started to give. She couldn’t think, she could only feel. Fear, fear, nothing but fear! She felt the screams coming out of her, but she couldn’t hear them over the shrieks of everyone else. Her hands were clenched—on Burke?—but she couldn’t feel them. Her hands were numb, she needed to run, to hide, but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Her heart was beating so fast—it was going to explode. Or she was going to go insane.
Then—salvation. Light!
It happened like an explosion, and so painful to her dark-accustomed eyes that an instant headache burst into life at the back of her head. But at last, at last, the room erupted in light, the perfectly ordinary lights of the gym, high above all the decorations, glaring down on everyone with white fluorescence.
And the fear—vanished. It just disappeared, leaving her limp and exhausted and feeling like a used paper towel.
Her brain started to work again; the first thing she realized was that she and Burke were clinging to each other like a—well, a terrified couple. Right now, she didn’t much feel like letting him go, and he didn’t seem to want to let go of her any time soon, either. He was alert, though, his gaze flitting all over the place. Looking for something? Or just looking?
She tried to get hold of herself and do the same. Whatever had caused this, it was pretty clear as she looked around the gym that it had come as a complete surprise to everyone; everywhere she looked, students were clinging to each other, confused, as wrung out as she was, and a few still scared. Even that hulking brute, Blake Watson, was white and shaking, his eyes wild, fists clenched. Dylan Williams was passed out cold on the floor a few feet away, and he wasn’t the only one who had passed out, either. As people managed to shake off the last of the fear and start to react, a couple little knots of people were forming around others. Spirit got sight of a poof of frothy pink skirt, a long trail of gold-and-black slinky stuff, and someone’s legs in tux pants. From far across the gym floor came the sound of someone throwing up.
The teachers had been caught off guard, too; the first teacher she spotted, Ms. Holland, was white, thin-lipped, and still shaking, groping for a chair to collapse into. Over near the “bar,” Mr. Krandal, Mr. Bowman, and Ms. Groves had just started to talk to one another, and at least Mr. Krandal was furious from the look on his face.
So none of them knew this was going to happen.…
Slowly, people were starting to throw off the lingering remains of the fear, and their reactions were as varied as the students and teachers were themselves. Spirit could hear, and see, people starting to cry; most of the adults were getting angry. Some people were very groggy, staggering or wobbling, acting as if they’d had a stroke or a concussion.
Whispers broke the silence, and a few sobs. Then more and more people started talking. Voices rose, echoing across the gym, then more and more joined in, until the babble was as loud as a storm over the ocean. Mostly people were saying the same thing. “What was that?” “What happened?” “Who did that?”