The White Witch *COMPLETE*

21- Baba Yaga

I shoved past Lucifer and caught Samuel as he stumbled forward. My bare arms pressed against his and his scalding hot thoughts seared into my mind. I hissed through my teeth as I tried to keep him on his feet while pressing my hand hard against the one he held over his wound. We needed to keep the bleeding down and he wouldn't be able to press hard enough in his state.

Images of a beautiful woman in tight, dark blue clothing with flowing russet hair shot through me like fire. The woman twisted with a blade in each hand, one of which sliced right across Samuel's stomach.

Wind picked up suddenly around us and I had half a second to brace both my body and the body full of fire I was holding up. The ground disappeared, then my feet slammed into a different floor. I stumbled with Samuel sagging against me, but managed to stay on my feet this time.

"What- Sir?" A new male voice asked uncertainly. He was a slender vampire in yet another suit. After a second he seemed to remember his place and dropped to one knee with a bowed head.

"Get up." Lucifer ordered only maybe one notch more impatient than normal. "Melody, set him down."

"What?" I barked. My hand was the only thing keeping him from bleeding out. My eyes shot to the vampire watching me curiously. He was a healing body Lucifer should be using to save his...whatever Samuel was.

Samuel's head lifted off my shoulder barely an inch. "You...must..." He breathed in a harsh voice that only made me want to help him more. He pushed weakly on me as he thought of the poison flooding through him. Why that meant I should drop him, I didn't understand. If anything, the fact that he was dying was more reason to fucking heal him. "Ma'am-"

I was tugged back by hands that flared blinding the second they touched me. I tried to grab Samuel as a scream tore out of him, but Lucifer nearly threw me behind him. Quickly, I regained my footing and was already bolting toward Samuel. If Lucifer wouldn't heal him, I would. But I needed to touch him. Lucifer would have to heal me if I took his injury. I hoped.

Samuel reared back with a scream that tore through my brain like a bullet. I dropped to my knees, slamming my hands over my ears with my own cry. His scream was more like a bird than a man. Like a giant, ear-piercing screeching bird.

My firmly closed eyelids lit up bright. I snapped them open just as a wild inferno ignited at the throat he was scratching his long claws into. Blood gushed from the long slices he created before the fire blazed to life and swallowed up his entire body. His scream lasted so much longer than I would've ever thought possible. Finally, his crackling body silenced and fell to the floor in a whoosh of ash.

Silence deafened the room.

I lurched forward and threw up all over the dark wood floor.

"I'll need you to send a squad to my house in Utah." Lucifer said calmly, as if a man hadn't just burned alive in front of us. "There's been a breech of hunters and we have reason to believe Michael is behind it."

"Are you serious?" I screeched, then slapped my hand over my mouth as my throat twisted sickeningly. Samuel was a man he knew for Christ's sake and he didn't care at all. Tears welled up hard and fast in my eyes, already dripping to the nasty floor before I had time to blink. Instinctively, my mind reached for that sliver of Douglas that always seemed in the back of my mind, but he wasn't there. We were too far away from each other.

"Yes Sir." The vampire ignored me. He strode out of the room as Lucifer walked up beside me.

"Do not worry." He said as he took my arm with his bright hand and carefully pulled me up. "Look,"

I followed his indicating hand to the charred body ten feet away and covered my mouth again. Then I saw it. A flicker of that odd mind.

"Samuel is a Phoenix." Lucifer explained about five minutes too late. "He dies in a flame and is reborn of the ash. I could've healed the wound but not the poison."