Darkness in Appalachia

Chapter 3

"Puk, please put him on the couch and go get the first aid kit. Ishould be in the bathroom on the lower level under the sink." Robynswitched on the lights in her living room and watched as Michelfloated into the room and onto the couch. Once, he was down, she wentover to the couch and rearranged his arms and legs into a morecomfortable position and turned his head to one side so that shecould look at the back. His hair was matted with blood but it lookedlike it had stopped bleeding sometime during the ride here.

"Walker went to get Beryl. She is the expert in healing magic andcan make sure that I didn't do any damage when I hit him." Pukreturned with the first aid kit and knelt beside me, lookinganxiously at the back of his head. "Does this break my contract?Are you going to have to punish me now?"

"I think that I can overlook it this time considering thecircumstances. As long as he lives and doesn't have permanentdamage."

Puk sighed, then perked up, "Maybe he'll want to punish me when hewakes up. What do you think Robyn?"

She bit back her sarcastic remark as Walker and Beryl walked in.Beryl was a nature sprite and appeared to be a walking bush. Her facewas formed by branches twining and twisting around each other,constantly in motion. This same motion propelled her forward to thecouch.

"Walker says that you have a man with a head injury here. You knowthat I don't like treating humans, right Robyn? What possible reasoncould you have for disturbing me in the middle of the night to seethis man?" Her voice was soft but grating and she was clearlyannoyed.

"I'm sorry, Beryl. I wouldn't have asked but we need to make surethat there is no permanent injury. I can treat the wound myself but Iwanted you to make sure of that for me. He's a police officer andcould cause a lot of problems for the reserve if something were tohappen to him." She had stood and turned to face Beryl as she spokeand made her voice as respectful as possible. "I won't make you ifyou really don't want to but it would really help me out."

She grumbled a little under her breath but moved up beside Michel onthe couch. "How exactly did this happen?"

Puk answered sheepishly. "I'm afraid that I did it. He was holdinga gun on Robyn and Bobby and I hit him in the back of the head with ametal pan."

Beryl didn't look up. "Why would you do that? You have enoughmagic that you could have taken him out without knocking his brainsout."

I turned towards Puk, "That's true. Why didn't you use magic toknock him out? It would have made everything a lot easier."

Puk was flustered. "I tried but I wasn't able to use any magicright then. Something was blocking it. I couldn't even make myselfvisible."

Walker spoke up. "Same thing happened to me. It felt like therewas a wall between me and my magic. It probably had something to dowith that scream. You haven't told me who that was yet." His tonewas almost accusing.

"Sorry, Walker. I was still a little dazed on the way here andwasn't up to speaking much. That scream came from the girl when Itried to perform the rite for her."

He snorted, "You must have performed it incorrectly for that tooccur."

Puk jumped to her defense. "No she definitely did it right butthere was something off about the child's body. The way it was openedsuggested something ritualistic. Is there a chance that anotherritual interfered with the rite you performed?"

I had turned back to watch Beryl with Michel, "I don't know of anyritual that requires something like that and the rite shouldn'tinterfere with any previous rituals. It's meant to be outside thenormal processes." Robyn closed her eyes and cleared her head. "Ican do some research on it later to find out for sure, though. Rightnow, we need to decide what to do with him."