The Witch’s Fate

Lucas

I'd been an interim priest for a week, and already it was apparent that our first order of business was to restore the coven's hope. I'd made a nice, fancy speech the night we drove the priestesses out of town, but it wasn't enough to get our people moving to rebuild the town. The coven had chosen my friends and me to lead them and restore what the previous Imperium Council had destroyed, but the priestesses had broken the coven far beyond its infrastructure.

These people were hopeless. It was up to us to show them that we could heal this community together.

Nadine and I approached the hospital doors at the clinic entrance. We'd spent the last week speaking with coven members and visiting public facilities to survey the damage and learn as much as we could about where we could help.

People needed us… everywhere. Buildings, businesses, and services all around town had been destroyed. It was already an overwhelming job, but I forced myself to stay positive. These people needed us, and I wasn't going to back down, no matter how desperate things seemed.

Nadine paused outside the hospital doors, and I stopped beside her. We were alone, because Talia and Grant were back at the house watching Marcus, and Chloe was at Miriam College, working with Verla and Warren on plans to reopen enrollment.

Nadine kept her voice low. "Before we go in, we need to be prepared. Not everyone is going to be happy to see us. Some of these patients were members of Miriam's Chosen, and they won't want to speak with us after we drove their leaders out of town."

I took her hands in mine to reassure her. "For every person who's angry, there will be someone who's grateful to see us. We just have to go in, listen to their concerns, and take them all to heart— the good and the bad. We need to show these people that we're listening, and that we're going to get them the help that they deserve."

"How are we going to promise that?" Nadine shot a glance toward the front doors, though we were alone. "The priestesses completely drained the council's funds before they left. There's no money left to run this town. We can't give these people promises we can't keep."

"We'll find a way," I vowed. "The priestesses may have stolen our resources, but we aren't giving up that easily. We'll find a solution. We have to."

Nadine nodded in agreement, then took a deep breath to steel her nerves. "You're right. The priestesses have taken so much from us before, and it hasn't stopped us yet. We just have to keep moving forward. Let's go see what assistance we can provide."

Nadine and I entered the hospital. The registration area was packed, but it was eerily quiet. The only voice that could be heard was the single receptionist behind the counter checking patients in. Other patients sat and waited their turn, but there weren't enough seats for everybody. Some patients were standing in line. It was obvious the clinic was severely understaffed.

A nurse hurried through the room, and an elderly man with a cane tried to stop her.

"Excuse me," he said weakly. "I'm looking for the radiology department."

"Ask reception," the nurse snapped. "I'm very busy."

Onyx entered the reception area in her nursing scrubs. We were supposed to be meeting with her so she could lead us around the hospital.

The elderly man approached her. "Excuse me, can you point me to radiology? I've checked in for my appointment, but I can't find where I'm going."

Onyx gave the man a kind smile and pointed. "Radiology is on the first floor down that hall. I can walk you there if you'd like."

"I don't want to trouble you," he insisted.

"It's no trouble at all," she replied. "Would you like a wheelchair?"

The man nodded, and his eyes brimmed with tears. He looked like he'd been ready to give up seeking help only a moment ago. I wondered how long he'd been wandering the halls looking for his appointment office.

"You stay right here. I'll be right back," Onyx assured the man. She approached the entrance, where Nadine and I were standing. She offered us a bright smile, though she looked exhausted, and her shift had only started an hour ago. "Good to see you both. If you want to follow me, I have a patient to help, and then I can show you around from there."

Onyx grabbed a wheelchair that was sitting by the door, and she helped the man into it. We followed her down the hall.

He looked up to me. "Are you a patient as well?"

"No," I told him. "My name is Lucas, and this is my wife, Nadine. We're from the Imperium Council, and we've come to see how we can help."

"Hmph," the man huffed. "Can't say I've heard of a man on the council for ages. What happened to the other council members?"

Nadine and I exchanged a glance. It'd been big news that the priestesses left town and we took over the council. I was surprised he didn't know.

"They left town," Nadine answered simply. "Coven members asked us to stand in their place."

The man frowned. "I don't keep up with politics. If you think you can help, then you can start by staffing this hospital. My hip has been bothering me for months, and I'm still waiting for a diagnosis."

"We'll see what shows up on imaging today, and hopefully you'll walk out of here with some answers," Onyx encouraged.

"I doubt it," he said flatly. There was no emotion behind it— no anger or anything. He merely expected that no one could help him, and he had already resolved himself to his fate. "It's time to accept that my last good years are over. My body's given up."

I wished I could offer him words of encouragement, but what could I say? So many people in the coven shared the same sentiment.

We reached the end of the hall, and Onyx led us into a small waiting room. There were several patients there, including a middle-aged man with a beard and a mother with her young child. Nadine recognized the elderly woman in the wheelchair closest to the door.

"Rose!" Nadine exclaimed. "I didn't expect to see you here."

I'd never met Rose, but I'd heard of her before. Nadine used to spend time with her at the nursing home, and they'd put puzzles together to pass the time.

Rose reached out for her, though her hands trembled weakly. "Priestess Nadine. It's so good to see you."

Nadine knelt at her side. "How have you been?"

"I've been better," Rose said. She spoke slowly, like finding the energy to talk was taxing. "I've been experiencing some knee pain, and the doctors at the resident facility were unable to help. They sent me here for more tests. How are you? Last I heard, you left town."

"I'm back," Nadine said.

The bearded man scoffed from across the room, though he didn't say anything. I noticed the mark of Miriam's Chosen on his wrist. He was most definitely a part of the cult and was amongst those who didn't want us here. The man crossed his arms and shifted in his seat, until he was turning away from us. He certainly didn't want to speak with us.

The woman with the child kept her gaze on me. She too bore the mark of the Chosen, but she didn't appear afraid of us. "Why are you here?" she asked.

I sat two chairs down from her so that I was at her level, but not so close as to make her uncomfortable. "We're here to speak to people and address their concerns. Is there anything we can do to help?"

I looked at her child, who was holding his arm. It appeared to be injured, though there were no visible external injuries.

"My main concern is getting my child proper medical care," the woman said. "We believe he's dislocated his arm, though we're waiting for imaging to confirm. We've been sitting here for hours. The staffing and resources at this hospital are severely lacking. What are you going to do about it?"

She wasn't angry; she was merely curious. She had been part of Miriam's Chosen, but it didn't appear that she was going to write us off immediately. Her main priority was ensuring her family was safe and well cared for, and she was willing to wait and see if we could provide for them in ways the priestesses hadn't.

I froze up. I wanted to give her specifics, but like Nadine said, we couldn't make promises we weren't able to keep. We were still trying to gather information to develop the best plan moving forward. How could I tell this woman we were going to fix everything when we didn't even know if that was possible?

"We're going to do our best to provide this hospital with more resources so that everyone is well taken care of," I promised. It was all I could really give her. I only worried our best wouldn't be good enough.

"I truly hope you're right," she said, before dropping her head. "I've gotten that answer from the priestesses before, and they never came through."

My guts sank, because I knew that wasn't the answer I'd wanted to give her. I wished I could provide more, but I didn't know how we were going to do that right now.

"Lucas, Nadine." Onyx gestured us over, and we stepped out into the hall. "I ran into Dr. Tracey in the hall. She's willing to speak with you."

Down the hall, I saw a woman I recognized in a white lab coat. It was Dr. Anna Tracey, Nadine's nephrologist who we'd met during the kidney transplant. She reached out to shake our hands when we approached.

"Nadine, Lucas, it's nice to see you again," she said. "I only have a few minutes, but Onyx says you're here to listen to our concerns. I'd like to know what the Imperium Council plans to do to rectify the budget issues we've been facing."

"That's what we're here to figure out," I told her. "What would you say are your main concerns?"

Dr. Tracey pursed her lips. "My main concern is that this hospital won't be able to continue treating patients, and that it will completely shut down within the year. People are losing trust in us, and we aren't able to provide them with the level of care they deserve. They believe we don't care about our patients, but that couldn't be further from the truth. We want everyone to be taken care of, but we simply don't have enough resources to go around. We've already been forced to shut down several patient wards, because we don't have the staff or the medical supplies to keep them running. So many of our nurses and doctors left town to find work elsewhere, and we've used up everything trying to treat the patients here."

"What would be the most help to this hospital?" Nadine asked. "What if we sent volunteers?"

"We already have volunteers, but without proper medical training and licensing, they can only help so much," Dr. Tracey said. "What we need is money. In the last year, the priestesses diverted the bulk of our funding for themselves. We had to fire staff, as well as pick and choose which medications and supplies are a priority. Non-life-threatening illnesses have gone untreated, but we can't keep these people waiting around forever. We need you to restore our funding, so we can bring back our staff, purchase more medical supplies, and give these people the care they deserve."

"Thank you for the valuable insight," I told her. "We will do our best."

I heard the words come out of my mouth again, and I hated that it was the only thing I could say. I was a priest, and I was supposed to have power, but at this point I felt absolutely useless.

"What exactly do you plan to do?" Dr. Tracey cocked an eyebrow. We needed to give these people specifics, but we didn't have the money sitting around to simply hand over.

"We'll ask for resources and assistance from Hok'evale," I offered. "They've been willing to help us before, and I'm sure they will again."

It wasn't enough, and we all knew that. Assistance may help alleviate some of the burden, but it wasn't a long-term solution, and Hok'evale had their own people to provide for. They couldn't take care of themselves and a whole witch city on top of it.

Dr. Tracey left with a frown on her face. She'd obviously been hoping for a better answer.

I turned to Nadine and Onyx. "We need to come up with a real plan, because I can't keep promising these people our best and giving them jack shit in return."

"What can we possibly tell them?" Nadine asked desperately. "They're just so devastated. We thought people would react when we arrived, at least be angry or grateful— something. But it's like they've gone numb. They don't even care who's in power anymore, because it doesn't matter. They feel their lives are over. The priestesses sucked the life right out of them."

Onyx's features went pale. "It doesn't look good if you two are in the most powerful position in the coven and even you are completely helpless. If we can't change things in the coven, they'll throw you off the council."

"Worse than that," I muttered. "Things are still tense around here. It's a possibility people could get angry at the lack of progress and blame us for it. We could still hang."

"There have to be resources we can utilize that aren't reliant on money," Nadine insisted. "We can trade and barter with other supernatural societies to obtain resources. We can utilize volunteers, and we can provide incentives of some sort to get businesses back off the ground. Once our economy is going again, we can fund the hospital. We just have to move quickly."

"It sounds nice when you say it, but our best resource for trade is magical potions, and without access to ingredients, we aren't going to be able to trade anything," I pointed out. "Volunteers are nice, but people can't give their time when they're struggling to survive?—"

Kaboom!

I was cut off by the sound of an explosion. My heart leapt as the ground shook beneath us. The blast sent us flying off our feet so fast that none of us managed to cast a shield in time. I landed hard against the floor as building materials rained down around us.

My ears rang, and it took me a moment to orient myself. Nadine and Onyx lay beside me, but the ward we'd just left had caved in. There was still some structure to the building, but the hall was covered in dangerous debris, and dust billowed into the air.

Nadine scrambled to her feet and shouted something, but I couldn't hear it. I shook my head, and the ringing in my ears began to subside. The sound of an alarm grew louder, and screams filled the air.

"We need to search for survivors!" I heard Nadine shout.

Onyx was already following her, and the girls climbed over rubble to get back to the radiology waiting room. I shook off the shock and quickly got to my feet. We had been on the edge of the blast zone. If we'd been only a few more feet down the hallway, we'd have been crushed under the rubble.

"I'm right behind you!" I called over the sound of the alarm. I cast a shield around us, so that if any remaining debris fell, we wouldn't be injured by it.

The radiology department hadn't been far from where we'd been standing, but it seemed like a mile as we traversed the rubble. The alarm continued to blare, but the panicked screaming that we'd heard had faded. The hospital must've evacuated.

As we came closer to the worst of the blast, it became abundantly clear that we weren't going to find any survivors. There was too much rubble, and this waiting room had been too close to the explosion.

Then we heard it— a distant whimper. "Priestess Nadine?" an elderly female voice called out.

"It's Rose!" Nadine cried as she jumped over a pile of rubble to get to her.

I didn't see Rose anywhere. Then Nadine knelt next to a pile of debris, and I saw a wrinkled hand reaching out for her. Rose was pinned beneath pieces of concrete and building materials. I quickly came to her side to see there was a small hole in which we could see through. Rose was lying on her back, and a small but weak shield shimmered around her. She'd been quick enough to cast it so that she hadn't been crushed.

"I don't know how long I can hold it," Rose whimpered weakly.

"I'll hold the shield," I told her. "Onyx, go find as many Mentalists with telekinesis as you can. We need help moving the rubble! Call Chloe, too. We're going to need her."

Onyx took off immediately to go find help.

Nadine took Rose's hand in hers. "It's going to be all right. Lucas and I are here, and we aren't leaving."

I formed a shield around Rose. I tried expanding it outward to push the rubble aside, but it was so heavy that it required all my strength. The rubble shifted, and several pieces tumbled over each other, nearly knocking into Nadine and me.

"Lucas, stop," Nadine pressed. "Wait until the Mentalists arrive. We have to work together."

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't panicking. This was a deliberate attack, and unless we found out who did it, it was going to happen again.

Mere moments passed before Onyx returned with a team of doctors and other medical staff. They'd already been on their way when they heard the explosion, and they quickly surrounded Rose to help get her to safety. Mentalists used telekinesis to carefully remove the rubble, then they levitated Rose into the air and hurried off to another ward to provide immediate care. Other staff members looked for more survivors, but I wasn't sure we'd find any.

Onyx gestured us over, and Nadine and I went to her side. The worried look on her face scared me. "Did you get a hold of Chloe?" I asked.

"I did, and she's already on her way. There's something you're going to want to see," Onyx said hollowly. "You should both follow me."

Onyx led us back down the hall, and it seemed to take forever before we reached an area that wasn't covered by debris. Onyx took us outside into the parking lot, and she pointed upward. My stomach turned to stones, and Nadine grabbed on to me tightly. There in the sky was a message, written out in dark smoke— a spell obviously cast by whoever had caused this.

Long live our rightful priestesses!

I didn't know who was specifically responsible, but it was obviously someone within the priestesses' cult.

Tires squealed, and a black car with gold trim came screeching to a halt in front of us. It was Priestess Lilian's car, but Chloe had claimed it as her own once her grandmother left town. It was really fancy and belonged to the family trust, so Chloe technically had a rightful claim to it. Chloe jumped out of the car. She didn't even look up at the writing in the sky, as if she'd been watching it the whole ride here.

I still couldn't take my eyes off the smokey black words. "If they wanted to target Nadine and me, why take these other innocent people with them?"

"People like this don't care about the sick," Nadine said hollowly. "They think disabled people take up resources, and they surely believe the ill are the same people who put us in power."

Chloe marched up to us, looking ready to kick someone's ass. "Make no mistake, Lucas, this wasn't just an attack on you. It was an attack on us all, to destabilize the coven and create distrust in the new Imperium Council. I just received word from Miles. We know who did this."

"Miles has only been leading the police force for a week. He's already caught the guy?" Nadine asked.

"No, they've fled," Chloe replied. "The Executors that were locked up in jail are gone— every single one of them."

"What!?" I roared. "How could this happen?"

Chloe shook her head. "We don't know. Miles went on his lunch break, and when he came back to the station, the cell doors were unlocked, and the Executors had taken off. Miles is sheriff now, but other people stepped up to help him out with the police force. One of the volunteers must've helped the Executors escape."

It was the only explanation, because the Executors couldn't have gotten out by themselves. The jail cells were made of noxite bars.

"Miles received a call from a witness saying they saw the Executors heading toward the hospital. The witness watched them cast a spell to blow up the radiology wing," Chloe explained. "Miles and his team are patrolling the nearby streets, but the Executors are gone."

"Fuck!" I growled, kicking a rock so hard it skidded halfway across the parking lot. "We should've been more prepared! If someone on the police force betrayed the coven, that means there are more people inside the city right now willing to help the priestesses. Someone who was supposed to be on our side helped them escape. There are more people willing to turn their backs on us right now than those who are willing to help us!"

We knew we'd be met with backlash, but I didn't think the coven would continue the priestesses' torment of murdering innocent people. The reality was harrowing.

Anyone could turn on us at any time. We had no way of knowing who was already plotting their next move. Betrayal could come from anyone…

Even someone we trusted.

Continue The Witch's Fate to defeat the priestesses and save the coven!