The Hag's Blood Incident

Chapter 10

     The three of us ran down the hallways and out onto the dock. I ran down the short stair next to the building while Tam just jumped straight down to the pavement. Ari slid down the banister of the stairs on her backside. We continued running the short distance across the parking lot and piled into our respective positions in the car.

     "You said they took Lilly to a women's shelter, right?" I asked, opening the back door of the sedan.

     Ari puffed her cheeks and blew out a breath of exasperation, smoothly sliding into the front seat and pulling out her phone in one fluid motion.

     I paused momentarily, jerking my thumb at one of the streetlights that occupied a cement block between the parking lot and the side street where the storage complex was located. The bulb exploded in its plastic casing as my magical ring absorbed the light energy from the lamp.

     "Jesus, yeah." Tam replied, opening the driver's side door and flinging the police utility belt over to Ari.

     She caught the leather clumsily, carefully avoiding the buckle, handcuffs, and pistol strapped into its holster.

     Tam slung himself into the driver's seat. "Sorry, Ari." He looked up at the damaged streetlamp, through the windshield, while he was starting up the car. He threw his arm over the back of the passenger's seat. "Did you have to take that?" He asked irritably, as I clambered into the backseat. "The people around here use that light to make it home safe."

     "More voltage, more lumens. More lumens, more power." I said simply, shrugging.

     Turning back around, Tam snorted through his snub nose and set his jaw. He pulled out of the parking lot space and took us across the rest of the asphalt and gravel. He didn't look satisfied, but he didn't argue the point, either.

     I looked back, through the rear window at the loading dock, as Tam pulled the car away. It had just occurred to me that we ran across it unimpeded. "What happened to the spell tape?"

     Ari turned to look back at me, where I was sitting, and smiled, withdrawing the roll of yellow and black plastic from the front pocket of her heavy-duty shirt. "Might come in handy." She said handing the heavy leather belt back to me, along with the small roll of tape. "Put it in one of the pockets, Love, please." She asked nicely.

     Tam peeled out of the parking lot, jerking us back in our seats, and sending gravel flying into the air. The tiny rocks spattered the dock and the building behind us with a staccato clicking sound. I even saw some of the foliage from the green patch behind the building move as it was struck, as well.

     Within moments, my palm throbbed with an itching sensation. I turned my hand over and a tiny full-color image of Toulouse was projecting itself out of the acorn of scar tissue on the ball of my thumb. Mind you, there weren't many colors, mostly browns, blacks, and greens, but, the tiny spirit's image shook its miniature wooden fist at me. I could hear the curses of the nature spirit in my mind, before it winked back out again. I raised my eyebrow at that. While cantankerous, instant communication with a nature spirit could come in handy, if I could figure out how to make the channel work both ways.

     Tam turned to Ari at the stoplight as we were turning onto Broadway. "Where do the cops take domestic violence victims?"

     Ari had been typing information into her phone the whole time we had been moving. "There are six different locations I can find for women's shelters, along with the three hospitals where they could have taken her, too." She reported.

     "Hey, let me try something." I concentrated on the scar tissue on the palm of my hand, trying to reach out with my mind toward the little nature spirit. If I could commune with it, I might be able to get some answers. It didn't like me, so I'd have to fight for them, but anything was better than running around all day, going to every shelter in the city.