The Hag's Blood Incident

Chapter 12

     The tunnel my brain was fighting going down suddenly got long and I saw Jorge running toward us as everything went black. I tried to turn to Tam to warn him that I was going out, but my neck wouldn't turn. I heard Jorge curse and speak in Spanish. I tried to answer him, to tell him I didn't understand what he was saying, but my tongue felt too thick and I couldn't move my jaw. As the seconds passed, his speaking voice, which started out normally, stretched out its syllables as I slid sideways down the wall. There was a bright light that I swear I could see, even as my eyes slipped closed, and then I slammed into it and everything went black. I knew it was going to happen, I couldn't catch myself. I didn't even feel my head hit the floor.

     Some unknown unit of time later, I woke up with a start, gasping and breathing into an oxygen mask. There was a loud ululating noise coming from above me, although it was muffled some by the metal roof. I was strapped to a gurney, and I was moving. Correction, the gurney wasn't moving, it was locked into place, but the place I was in was moving. There was a man in a grey shirt and dark pants placing a blood pressure cuff on my upper arm. He pressed a cold stethoscope into the crook of my arm and I groaned, trying to enunciate my questions about my relative position in space.

     He looked over at my face and shuffled over to get a pen light, which he found and shone directly in my eyes.

     I flinched. "Jeshush." I murmured groggily. The sound of my voice echoed hollowly in the plastic mask on my face.

     He made a note on a clipboard. "Good you're awake." He said in a relieved tone of voice. Although crouched, the man turned his back to me. "What happened to you guys?" He was moving around doing something over there.

     "We got caught in a maghical shecurity shystem, shomehow. Pretty shure it was black maghic." My words were coming out slow, slurred. I turned my head, inching it in slow painful fractions until I could see what the man was working on.

     Tam was laying across the center space next to me, also strapped to a gurney. He wasn't conscious.

     "That's my friend." I said to the paramedic. "Is he okay?" The oxygen mask must be helping. My words were coming out normally, again.

     "We're not sure. The garage owner said the three of you were doing some cleanup for him at a murder site, and he found you in the hallway. You passed out as he was coming to get you. You're friends were already unconscious." He said to me while he was taking Tam's vitals. He turned his head back over his shoulder and saw me looking at him. "Shit." He said. He turned to me and grabbed my head gently, but firmly and slowly rotated it back to its center position, before strapping it down to the gurney. "The strap must have come loose. Keep your head in that position. You suffered a head injury. We need to make sure there's no damage to your neck or spine."

     I swallowed the panic that rose up in me and stared straight at the metal ceiling of the vehicle.

     The paramedic turned away from me again, out of my new line of sight, probably to go back to work on Tam. "It's a good thing you came to, now. It'll give us a few steps ahead for the doctors." I saw him push himself backwards past us, into the cabin. "Human's awake." He said."Said it was some kind of magic system that knocked them out, probably a psychic overload, if I had to guess. Symptoms seems similar. Psychotron reading is at 0.441 per calimbyte. Orc's at 5.23 per calimbyte. Call it in. Call unit 412 as well, let them know, about the overload, too."

     I heard a second voice from up front talking into a radio as the paramedic threw himself back into the box with us. I saw him put a bag of clear fluid on a pole above Tam's head.

     "Where's Ari?" I asked thickly. The words were coming easier, but my mouth was still having trouble forming them.

     I felt the sting of a needle in the crook of my arm as the paramedic stabbed me and placed an I.V. bag on the pole mounted above my head. He made another notation on his clipboard. "The young lady he was holding?" He asked indicating Tam with a sideways thrust of his chin. "She's in a following unit. We're all headed to the hospital after your accident."