Chapter 26

We all went to eat after cleaning up and changing clothes. Using Magic more than just casually always leaves one hungry. After the huge amounts of Magic that we had all used that morning, we were all ravenous. Consequently, we all overfilled our plates, and more food had to be brought in from the kitchen for the late arrivals, who were naturally our O’Neill Uncles and our four female Cousins. They had also been the last to return after the battle.

Gretchen, of course, was eating for three and hadn’t had anything to eat since early last night, so she also filled a plate with eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, toast, butter and honey. Pat and I had gotten large pitchers of milk for our tables.

There was very little said during breakfast, as we were all too intent on our food to spend time on anything so frivolous as talking. Eating was much more important at the time. We could and would talk later, as there were many questions that needed answering. We all just sat there and relaxed for a bit after finishing our meals. I had to let my belt out a notch and open the top button on my pants, I had eaten so much.

“The meeting will start in ten minutes,” Grandmother Margie announced after finishing her meal, and looking at her watch, one of the few which still worked.

“You all go on. I need to take Gretchen back to our apartment,” I told my other women.

“Yes. I need to take Petra back also,” Pat said as soon as I finished.

“We aren’t that incapacitated,” Gretchen told me. “We can make it back there by ourselves.”

“Not now you can’t,” I told her, and Pat nodded in agreement.

“Why not!” both women asked in surprise.

“Because we have both warded the apartments with our strongest personal wards, and NOBODY but an O’Connell, or our other girlfriends can get past them,” Pat told the two women.

“Are we being locked in!?” both women demanded in shocked surprise.

“No, we’ll show you how to get through them - but later,” I told them. It was at this point that Grandmother Katie interrupted us making the foregoing completely irrelevant.

“We will want Gretchen and Petra at the meeting to tell us how they and the other girls wound up out there on those altars. We don’t have access to the other girls right now, but believe me neither the Military or Grandfather O’Neill’s advisers want to even suggest that Gretchen and Petra should be turned over to them for questioning. They all saw what our Family did out there, and no one, and I do mean NO ONE wants to upset any of us,” Grandmother Katie finished with a big grin of her own. We all joined hands and vanished from the banquet hall and immediately reappeared in the conference room.

Pat and I found Gretchen and Petra the most comfortable chairs available. Grandfather Mark was sitting at the head of the table with our Grandmothers on either side of him. Our older Relatives and their Spouses took up the rest of the table, but left two comfortable chairs at the far end where we seated Gretchen and Petra. Our other girlfriends, Pat and I sat behind them along the wall.

Our two O’Neill Uncles sat in chairs against the wall also with our four female Cousins, who weren’t about to let our Uncles get very far from them. Those girls are very possessive. The rest of the younger generation was also sitting along the walls.

“Settle down,” Grandfather Mark told everyone once we were all there and seated. Silence fell on the room at his words.

“We are here to go over the events of this morning while they are fresh in everyone’s mind,” he finished.

“I don’t think any of us will ever forget what we did and went through this morning,” my Dad said after Grandfather had finished.

“Yes, and there are those of us who will have nightmares for a considerable time because of what we caused out there,” Uncle Sean O’Connell said in a very calm voice, but there was none of his usual smile. No one in the room disagreed with him.

Naturally, they started with Pat’s team and mine. We, after all, had been the first to radio in a report, and had faced the most powerful Wizards and the Persian Infantry.

Our Grandparents didn’t understand how all of those units and the altars could be in place before any of us noticed them. I explained what the Eternal Flame had told us about their use of Sex Magic and Blood Magic together. None of us was quite sure how they could be used together, or exactly what Sex Magic was, because it was after all illegal and forbidden.

We went on to describe our battle with the Wizards and the Persian Infantry. Everyone was shocked when we told them about the O’Toole Sisters calling red hot lave from somewhere under the ground and firing it against those attacking us from the rear.

“It’s something that Earth Mages can do,” was all that the pair would admit to.

We were followed by our Parents and then our Aunts who described who they had fought during the battle. We had, of course, seen a part of the results of our Parents attack on the rebel forces. Our Aunts had faced some minor Persian Wizards on their sides of the city, and had been helped by the Eternal Flame in dispatching them and rescuing the pregnant girls just as we had been. The Grand Master’s Elite Forces had returned the girls to the Palace. The last to report were the O’Neill brothers and our female Cousins. Seamus O’Neill spoke for them.

“After hearing from all of you, I feel out of place reporting what we did this morning,” he began. “There was an attempt by the rebel forces to enter the city on both sides by crossing the moat near the river and coming around the end of the last bastions. Our people in those bastions were hard pressed until we showed up with your Cousins, who proceeded to eliminate the threat.

“The defenses in the river prevented the few small ships that they had from approaching the city and helping the rebels in their assault. Other than that, we didn’t see a lot of action. Certainly nothing like the rest of you saw,” Seamus finished in a relieved tone of voice.

“What about the ships that the Persians arrived in? Any of the Persians that survived would surely try to escape in them, and it may already be too late to stop them,” Aunt Edana asked.

“You don’t have to worry about that, Aunt Edana!” Meegan told her Aunt. “No one will be using those ships. We fixed them.”

“Would you care to define ‘fixed’, Meegan?” Grandfather Mark asked.

“We cut holes in the hull planking. The water in the river did the rest. It’s hard to sail a ship that is resting in the mud on the bottom of the river,” she told him with a wolfish grin.

“Yes, I believe that is correct,” Grandfather admitted, as he tried to suppress his own grin.

“The ships weren’t totally destroyed, they just sank. We told your Cousins where to cut the planking,” Sean O’Neill added. “We’ll be able to raise them, and repair the damage. If we don’t need them in our Naval Forces, they should bring a good price,” Sean told us with a grin.

“I knew there was reason that I liked that boy. He has a mind for making money,” Grandmother Katie said with a big smile. There was a good bit of laughter and giggling at her comment, as we all knew that she was the original business woman in the family.

“We now come to the reason that I asked the two young ladies that Mike and Pat’s teams rescued to be here,” Grandfather said on a more serious note. All of the laughter stopped. “Can you ladies tell us how you came to be out there?” he finished.

“Yes, Master. We can tell you, but some of it will be very hard to recount. It was a very bad experience,” Gretchen told him. I could hear that the tears were ready to start from the tone of her voice. I got up, stood behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders, so that she would know that I was there for her. Pat had done the same thing for Petra.

“When he learned that the Persians had arrived, the Grand Master sent all of the pregnant girls and some others down to the lower levels of the Palace. These areas are well below ground, Master,” Petra began.

“Having worked here, we knew that we were being taken to storage rooms that had been emptied. Cots had been placed in them. The walls there are thick, as are the doors. There were Elite Guards in the hall to keep everyone away from there. All of the pregnant girls were put in the same room.

“We had been there for four or five hours when Master Muntzer, one of the Grand Master’s most trusted and influential Advisers arrived. He told us that the Grand Master had decided that we should be moved to a more secure and less obvious place during the impending siege. He even had a written order signed by the Grand Master,” Petra finished.

“The Captain of the Elite Guards was worried about our safety on the move, and didn’t want us to go without an escort. Master Muntzer finally agreed to take two of his guards with him. He led all of the pregnant girls and the two guards down to another level where he opened a door to a tunnel,” Gretchen told us.

“The tunnel led to a house in the Alstadt (old town). There we were met by other men who Master Muntzer said were his own guards, and he tried to convince the Elite Guards to leave. They, however, refused to go, saying that THEY were assigned to guard us.

“We all then went to a second house in the Alstadt, one near the old town walls. Here we went down to the basement, and Master Muntzer opened another door that led even further down to a tunnel that eventually leveled out. It went for a long way underground. The Elite Guards had not been happy about this and argued with Master Muntzer. Suddenly there was a scream, and we could no longer hear the Elite Guards arguing.

“This was when the new guards grabbed each of us and held us while others tied our hands behind our backs, and then stuffed rags in our mouths. They tied sashes around our mouths to keep the rags in and prevent us from making any noise. Master Muntzer then led us through the tunnel. It was very long, and in part of it the floor was very wet. I think that was where we passed under the outer moat,” Gretchen finished in tears. I leaned down and kissed her cheek. I had a feeling that we hadn’t gotten to the worst part yet.

“They kept telling us to hurry,” Petra continued after a brief pause. “It was difficult to do, as most of us are unable to walk very fast in our condition. The guards struck several of us, and we hurried as best we could, but they still weren’t happy with us.

“When we thought that we could go no farther, the tunnel went upwards, and then there were some stairs. We came out in the basement of a strange house. We had no idea where we were, but there were other men there waiting for us. Master Muntzer spoke to them through an interpreter. None of us recognized the language.

“The strange men took charge of us, and they were even less gentle and considerate than the other guards had been. We were thrown into some wagons, and they drove us to what we learned was the main camp of the rebels. The new guards had untied us, but only to strip us of our clothes before they re-tied us. We were then taken into a large tent and thrown at the feet of some foreign men in Wizards clothes!” Here Petra stopped, as the tears flowed heavily down her cheeks at the memory. Pat leaned in and kissed her ear, and her neck as she continued to cry and her body shook in fright at the memories of what had happened next. Gretchen was crying too, and the explanation stopped for a time, so the women could regain control of their emotions.

“There were a dozen of those foreign Wizards there. They all ran their hands over us, and probed our bodies with their fingers, and eventually ... their man parts. They... !!” Gretchen stopped for a time again. She was breathing very raggedly, and the tears had started again.

“They violated us in every way possible. They used spells in their strange language while they took us sometimes more than one at a time. Later they drank some kind of potion. It seemed to revive their vigor, and they all took each of us again several times. It ... it was horrible. I know that I passed out, and am sure that some of the others did also.

“When I awoke, one of the Wizards was collecting their juices from us and from the black stone slab that we were tied to. Then another one took a sharp knife and cut each of us. The blood was collected in the same bowl with their juices. The black stone slab had channels cut in it, and a drain at the very end. That was where they collected the blood and any of their leftover juices. I used a small spell when they left us for a time to heal the cut. I was afraid that I would bleed to death. I couldn’t do anything for the others, as it would have attracted the attention of the Wizards.

“Later just before dawn, we were moved somehow to where Michael and Patrick found us in front of the north gate of the city. I was so ashamed and scared!” Gretchen finished. She was shaking so badly that I worried she would fall out of the chair. I kissed her face again to try to calm her down.

“Why don’t you boys take the girls to your apartments? They need to recover, and I’m sure that they will do that better with you there too,” Grandmother Margie told us. Pat and I wasted no time in transferring ourselves and our pregnant women to our apartments. Gretchen cried and her body shook for a long time as I held her there on our bed. I did my best to calm her down, and after a time she fell asleep - exhausted. I covered her with a sheet to keep her warm, and debated returning to the conference room.

Shannon and Clare appeared in our apartment shortly after that. They had the things that we had left in the tower with them including the radio.

“You really don’t want anyone to get in here, do you?” Shannon asked after she appeared. “You and Pat put all of your wards around these rooms.”

“Yes. I don’t want anyone but our people in here. You can’t trust anyone here. Where there was one traitor there are liable to be more,” I told her.

“I see that Gretchen is asleep. I’ll calm her further, so you can propose to her when she wakes up,” Clare told me, as she got on the bed and lay down beside Gretchen.