Witches of Lust Ch. 15

Once Bellevon engaged, Stu let go of the emergency light and dropped. He drew his two long knives before his feet hit the ground.

I was in the next room handing out cures when the deafening roar of gunfire boomed through the ward. The parents were already shocked by our presence and did not know how to react. Only when they heard Karina and Eli start shouting "Get down! Get down!" did they grab their children and hide down on the ground.

It took five, maybe ten seconds for me to realize we were being ambushed. That was my cue to head into the fight and heal any injured. Time started to slow for me as my adrenaline surged.

I burst out of the room and into the hallway, and saw Stu closing in on that nurse with both blades drawn. Bellevon was already doing his best to lop her head off, but somehow she was still fighting back bare-handed. I still hadn't seen the ones she had shot, as they were in the next room down the hall.

That is when a fusillade of bullets came whipping through the hallway, battering Stu and nearly killing me too. We were both hit multiple times. The pain was everywhere, until a bullet burst through my neck. For a split second I was certain my throat and spine were destroyed, because I couldn't feel anything else. I began to topple, and I knew I needed to heal myself quickly.

I caught myself on my elbows and knees. My arms and legs had life once more, and I screamed in pain as more bullets tore into my side.

Still bleeding from multiple wounds, I picked Stu up and flew us out of the kill zone. I took him into the nearest room, which was where the others had been ambushed.

I had been reaching out to heal enough trauma since Chicago to know how to deal with bullet wounds. The only difference between us and those patients were that in our case, some of the bullets were still inside of us. We were also under attack, and every second counted as I tried to focus on each wound individually.

While I healed a bullet wound in Stu's liver and lungs, I became aware of Irina and Lucille, slumped against the wall, dark blood spreading across their shirts and their blue jeans. As soon as I was done healing Stu, I attempted to heal them. Both had bullets lodged in their bodies. Lucille's was gushing blood from her upper torso and a steady flow of blood was coming out of her mouth and so on. I closed up her wounds and then moved on to Irina. Next I began to heal Gaff, who had taken three to the chest and had only moments to live. Frustratingly, I had to leave all three bullets inside of him. Then I got back to myself, with some bullet holes in my shoulder, hips and thighs. I had been shot eleven times.

At the same time, Morgana flew back inside. She pointed her outstretched palm at the blonde witch and a flurry of yellow bolts blasted out, each striking the witch and doing absolutely no damage.

"Dispel! Dispel!" Karina yelled.

Morgana understood and she cast dispel magic on the witch. Bellevon's next blow took off the witch's hand.

The witch let out a scream like a banshee and the blood from her wound started to burn, some of it igniting Bellevon's coat. She danced away from him in a moment of distraction and he tried to advance. His coat started to really go up in magical flames, forcing him to take it off even as the material burned up into tatters.

Morgana didn't wait another moment. She pointed her palm at the witch and said an incantation that sent a purple blast of energy into the witch's chest. The wave of purple energy lacerated her to the bone. Her mutilated body slammed into the corner of the room, along with a splash of her burning blood. What was left of her corpse crumpled to the ground and everything in that corner started to burn like a bonfire, releasing thick black smoke.

Before anyone else could react, Eli began dousing the fire with a fire extinguisher, choking the flames with icy clouds of carbon dioxide.

"Shields and shells, let's go!" Karina yelled, pulling a glock out of her jeans. Her command was meant for Irina and Lucille, who quickly began casting protection spells on us, starting with the knights, then Karina, Eli and the rest of us. The knights took off after the one that had shot me and Stu. I had another idea, however. I whispered into my shoulder, and Zurknod agreed to take the witch captive if he could do it without the knights seeing.

The knights gave chase, and Morgana did not have the time nor energy reserves needed to cast stoneskin on everyone. She cast it on Gaff alone, and he led the way, with the other knights staying behind him.

They sprinted down the hallway, charging at the witch as she fired upon them. Gaff was the only one who could safely fire back, and he shot the sinister assailant in the face. Her stoneskin was still in effect and the bullet ricocheted off harmlessly. She returned fire fearlessly, hitting Gaff several more times. His stoneskin spell still held, but it could not take much more..

"Zenik mal! Irina shouted from where she stood in the back ranks. The witch's carbine was ripped from her hands, and not a moment too soon. It skidded towards the knights.

The witch recognized when she had lost. She had no gun, no covering fire, and and faced onrushing fighters supported by an entire coven of witches. She ducked behind the corner, levitated off the ground and up into a trap door in the ceiling.

While she moved to shut the trapdoor and conceal her escape route, a pocket dimension opened up behind her, and a multitude of tentacles emerged from the glowing interdimensional rift. They encircled her wrists and ankles, her waist and neck. Almost instantly, they had her restrained, muffled and gagged. They slapped her until her stone skin spell wore off.

Then the tentacles went to work on her, tearing off her scrubs, panties and bra. To steal her spirit energy and render her powerless, they forced themselves into her three major orifices, even as they started dragging her into the portal.

The knights stopped when they came around the corner of the T-intersection and saw only empty hallways. It took a moment before they noticed an opening in the ceiling. The ventilation shaft was a dangerous choke point and pursuit was called off. Instead, we asked them to be extra vigilant, and they immediately began to form a perimeter of security and clear the rooms on that floor.

"I have the witch," Zurknod whispered in my ear. "You may call off your men."

"I can't tell them that," I replied. "What's going to happen to her?" I murmured, safely out of earshot of the knights.

"Ah, well, my Hornunckthulide is starving, surely you understand," he whispered, intentionally vague.

"We need to keep her for questioning," I told him firmly.

He made a fuss and gave me a list of excuses.

"We will feed your demon, I promise, but we have a situation here, and I need the prisoner intact."

"Who said she was a prisoner? You- are you serious?"

"Yes, Zerky, I mean it!"

"Oh come on! I don't take orders from you!"

"Yeah, but you want to stay on my good side, ol' buddy. Is she alive now?"

"Of course, it would be a waste to rush-"

"She better be alive when we check on her." I should have probably said something about not letting the Hornunckthulide have its way with our captive, but we had just been ambushed and shot by her. I confess, at the time I really didn't give two shits if the creature raped her in sixteen different ways. Once Zurknod agreed to save her for questioning, I had no more time for arguing with him.

We all crouched near cover by the doorway of the room where we had regrouped. There was blood in the hallways, a fair bit of it ours.

"Is this it?!" Irina gasped breathlessly. "Is Medina behind this ambush!? What do we do?"

"Were there any more witches?" Morgana asked.

The knights who had been in the crossfire at the time seemed confident that there had been only two.

"Well, one got away, and most covens have three or more witches," Morgana said. "They could be setting up their next ambush, or they could be hiding simply because they know they are outclassed."

"At any rate, if we are doing any more healing here, we have to move!" Karina said.

Parents and kids were still cowering behind beds in every adjacent room, so the knights kept their muzzles pointed up as they checked the rooms for any remaining hostiles. We moved behind them and continued to hand out cures to the last of the cancer patients. The mob in the parking lot had retreated to the edges of the parking lot at the sound of gun fire.

About that time, a couple of police officers stormed the floor.

We figured the police knew us and the knights enough to treat us as friendlies. However, two cops saw the knights with weapons drawn and opened fire without warning.

Bullets bounced harmlessly off of Gaff, but Denny took a bullet to the ribs and Stu was hit in the thigh. They interlocked their arms and tried to remain standing, because if they took cover it would have exposed us to direct fire. Gaff raised his HK and blasted them with a ten round burst, many rounds hitting their mark.

"Don't shoot! Cease fire!" Lucille yelled. "Cease fire!"

I healed Denny as soon as I realized he had been hit. Then I healed Stu. Denny ran over to the cops and checked them, and I followed. Their bullet proof vests had provided some defense, but a few of the rounds had found their marks, and the hollow points had done grievous damage. The cops had only moments to live.

I healed them, even as Denny kicked away their guns and handcuffed them behind their backs with their own cuffs.

"We are gonna be in trouble when the news hears we shot some cops," I muttered to Denny, and he nodded.

Just then, a parent of one of the patients came out of one of the rooms. She put on a brave face as she walked slowly toward us. A ricochet had struck her in the arm. I took a moment to heal her injury.

"Thank you!" she said, lifting her hands and looking at them, then at her previously injured arm.

"Let me help," Morgana said. "There, bullets to droplets. That piece of shrapnel in your arm is gone." I in turn healed the little void where the twisted bullet fragment had been.

"There, all fixed," I told her.

"Oh, wow, thank you!" she exclaimed, running back into the room. She came out with a child no more than six. She was sporting a huge mane of blonde hair after eating a hair growth cookie. I gathered that she had been a cancer patient we had already cured.

"Thank you for helping my mommy," the little girl said. "I knew you could do it."

I smiled at her. "We're glad to help," I said, nodding anxiously and holding my hands out to tell her that she needed to get back in the room and hide.

"Why did the police shoot at you?" the child asked.

"They just didn't know we were the good guys. They are going to be alright, they were wearing bullet proof vests."

"I saw you heal them. That tells me they are not the bad guys, and you're really good."

"You should get inside that room and take cover," I said.

"How about the bad guys? Are they all gone now?"

"We're not sure, that's why-" I started to say.

"Okay, we'll go back and hide some more. Thank you, healing lady."

I watched the girl scamper away with admiration. She was more tuned in to our reality than most adults, certainly more than the hapless cops who tried to arrest or kill us.

Directly after that encounter, more parents and children came out to the doorways to express their thanks.

"Everyone, please, stay in your rooms for now," Eli said, raising his muzzle to the ceiling. "For your own safety, we need to clear this floor and make sure the shooter is stopped. Don't worry, we are professionals."

People did shrink back to the doorways, but now they wanted to see us. They did not fear the knights with their swords and guns, because they knew we were not hostile. They would not go away.

"We need to go out to the parking lot," Lucille said. "We got everyone here, I'm sure."

"I think you're right," Morgana said.

"Let's go then. Boys!" I called after the knights. "Men! Gather up! Let's head out to the parking lot."

Thus we gave up trying to clear the hospital. As far as the knights were concerned, that last witch we encountered got away, and this made them very nervous. Rather than tell them the truth, we decided to let them keep guard in tactically sound places overlooking the parking lot.

When we came outside to greet the mob, they rushed up and surrounded us, unfazed by our weapons. Some of them were carrying weapons as well, having heard gunfire.

There were hundreds of people, far more than we had ever tried to heal before, but we came prepared with quite a few cancer potions and besides, there was a lot that I could do for people just using my innate powers. We stayed in the parking lot almost a full hour, passing out healing potions and curing everything from diabetes to minor facial scars. People carried a nurse out to us on a gurney during that time. She had been hit by a bullet in the crossfire and it had shattered her femur just above the knee. She was in stable condition but doctors warned she might lose the leg.

That was not going to happen, I informed them. As I mended her bone and her flesh, Morgana transmuted the bullet into harmless water. She had already done the same for all of us, and I had gone back to heal any traces of the injuries those embedded bullets had left behind.

We wanted to ask some of the people we spoke with if they knew anything about the nurses who had ambushed us. The body of the witch Morgana killed could not be identified at first, but we gave a description to other nurses and they soon concluded that it must have been a woman who went by the name Geena Collins. We asked those nurses about her and who her friends were. In conjunction with a little mind-reading, I gained a few flashes of insight about Collins from each of the people who knew her. We found out that there were two more suspicious witches in the coven, we found out their names, and the name of a Dr. Eugene Clipper, who was almost certainly a warlock that dominated the coven. Unfortunately, Dr. Clipper was nowhere to be found, nor were the other witches.

TV and Internet news agencies arrived while we were still at the scene. We considered going to give interviews, but the media was less and less friendly and we felt healing was the bigger priority. They were on a righteous kick about how we ought to hand over as many cures as we could produce to the UN or the Red Cross so that they could be distributed to those most in need. It was odd about how every outlet was on the same page in that regard. In the end, the mob ended up forming a barrier and media reporters and cameramen could not penetrate it to approach us.

We watched the news closely later that night. The nurse whose bullet wound I healed gave an interview at the scene, as did many healed patients who were still there when the media showed up. There were also more patients who had arrived after the incident, and were hoping that we would return again.

"Well, that was a tough scrape," Irina said.

"It was terrible," Gaff said. "How did we lose so decisively?"

"We won, in the end," Lucille said, unconvincingly.

"I'm just glad you're okay, thanks to Jeanie." Morgana said. "Jeanie, you got shot in the neck, you know? You barely even fell down!"

"I didn't have time, we were still getting shot," I said, exchanging glances with a grateful Stu.

"Mistress Morgana, can you explain to us how our protection spells failed so catastrophically?" Denny asked.

"It was a trap. They knew we were coming. They knew we would be protected. They might have cast a spell that dispelled all of our enchantments," Morgana mused. "Except it did not seem to affect our aura sight. It only affected our stoneskin, which is almost impossible to notice until it's too late."

"Is there such a spell?" he asked.

"There is a spell to dispel only abjuration spells," Karina said, pulling out her phone. "What was it called? Hmm. Ah here we go. Tier Seven, Nosu's Ambush Enhancement. Whoa. It doesn't just dispel stoneskin. It steals it and puts all abjuration spells from one group, and puts it on your own group."

"Why those sneaky bitches!" Lucille swore. "How did they get access to a Tier Seven spell?"

"That's a good question," Morgana said.

"The recipe has been passed down in satanic circles. It's-" Karina began.

"Okay but how did they cast a tier seven spell?!" Lucille asked again. "Morgana can't even cast that, and she's the best sex witch there is! She totally outclassed those witches."

"They might have gotten help," Morgana said. "I may be a heck of a sex witch, but some satanic witches and warlocks are too dangerous for me to mess with."

"Are you ruling out Medina?" I asked.

Morgana shook her head. "She could have given them the scroll, I suppose, except she wasn't there to help them. It was over too quickly."

"So what do you think?" Irina asked.

"A powerful witch or warlock could have created that scroll. Dr. Clipper might have made it, or..." she trailed off.

"Or what?"

"Maybe it was given to his coven by an even greater warlock. It's possible that he serves someone else. There are some bad satanic guys out there, I mean, they have reveled in many hundreds of bloody human sacrifices to get there." We all got quiet for a moment.

"What if we get ambushed Nosu style again?" I asked, breaking the silence. "He could have more, right?" I asked.

"It's possible." Morgana said thoughtfully.

"I still I want to go back! Wasn't healing so many people just the best!?" Irina enthused.

"Besides, there is still a witch there, that we know," Eli said. "She can recruit more and rebuild a coven. I can't stand the thought of there being any left there." He placed a hand on Karina's knee, who was sitting behind him, and she looked up at him with admiration and placed a hand over his.

"Taking out covens has never been our priority," Lucille said.

"Look, more and more people are showing up," Karina said, pointing to the big screen where the news media were covering the event. "People have been driving all day to get there. You remember, they were still trickling in when we left."

"More and more will come," Lucille said. "Fewer and fewer will be children."

"Our priority is to defeat and destroy Medina. Our strategy of luring her out seems not to be working," Gaff said. "We remained for the better part of an hour at the very least."

"Guys, I'm sorry to have to remind you of this, but our goal, the Sisters, is not to take down evil covens nor to pursue the knight's quest. Our goal and priority is to help people," I told them. "Whether they are kids or not is kinda irrelevant."

"So what do you propose we do?" Morgana asked indulgently. It was clear from her tone that she wanted me to make the decision and speak for the coven.

"We keep helping people," I replied, a bit taken aback by how she thrust the reins of leadership in my unsteady hands.

"Are we going back to St. Jude's, then?" Morgana pressed.

"Um, yes. Perhaps tomorrow. Let me think about it." I just remembered I had a prisoner to interrogate.

"Why don't we all discuss it here?" Stu said halfheartedly.

"Yes, let's have it out then," Bellevon agreed, also sounding disappointed. They could tell when we were going to be mysterious in our ways, even if the knights were also putting their lives on the line. Moreover, it was clear that they did not like hearing that their quest was not a priority. I began to understand why they would jump at an opportunity to get out of this commitment.

"I'm sorry guys, we will get to the quest sooner or later, or it will come to us. If it doesn't, we might have to consider, um," I hated to tell them we might abandon the quest. "We might have to consider some things, okay? Look, I'll be back real soon-"