Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing. You guys are awesome.
Six Months Later
Slowing the car, Patty turned onto the dirt road that she'd missed the first two times she'd driven by.
'The girls come here every year for camp,' she thought, irritated with herself as she drove down the bumpy dirt road. 'You'd think that I would have an easier time finding it.'
It took her another fifteen minutes to reach Camp Skylark. To her immense relief, the campgrounds looked deserted.
'Thank god,' she thought, gratefully, as she put the car in park. 'The last thing I need is a bunch of Innocents running around getting in my way.'
She took a minute to herself before she got out of the car. Staring out at the tranquil-looking lake, she rested a hand protectively over her protruding stomach, and she felt the baby kick under her palm.
"Ready to go vanquish your first demon?" she asked, affectionately, and she got another kick in reply.
Getting out of the car, Patty headed towards the dock that stretched out over the lake. Her steps faltered as she got closer to the water, and she had to force herself to keep moving until she was standing at the end of the dock.
The water was quiet beneath her, but it wasn't going to stay that way for long. Not once the demon was aware of her presence.
'I'm not going to let you hurt another Innocent,' she thought, fiercely, as she glared at the lake. 'You don't get to have anyone else, especially not my girls.'
Backing up a few steps, she grabbed the power cables attached to the transformer. Then, she moved forward as far as she could.
"Come and get me!" she shouted, her voice ringing out over the water. "I'm here, you evil son of a bitch!"
For a second, it didn't seem as though the demon could hear her. Then, the water around the dock started churning, wildly, foaming and frothing under her feet. A form rose up out of the water, towering over her, and Patty found herself face to face with the nameless demon that had terrorized Camp Skylark for too long.
"You're finished," she growled, the words filling her with new determination as she stepped forward to meet the demon.
"Patty, no! Stop!"
She whirled around at the sound of the familiar, beloved voice, staring in horror as her husband came barreling down the dock towards her. She flung her hands up out of instinct, freezing Sam in his tracks, and then she turned her attention back to the demon.
In the few, scant seconds it had taken her to deal with Sam, the demon had moved forward to engulf her. Patty found herself petrified with terror, unable to move even an inch as the wall of water descended upon her in slow motion.
She raised her hands, instinctively, in a futile effort to protect herself. Then, she stared in amazement at the shield that formed between her and the water, completely surrounding her as the demon battered uselessly at the shield.
The demon retreated back into the lake, water whirling wildly into a tight cyclone that rose several hundred feet into the air. Patty dropped the power cables, useless now that the demon was too far away, and flung her hands out. She was trying to freeze the demon, even though she knew it wasn't going to have any effect. But, she couldn't just stand there and not do anything.
Then, to her utter shock, a jagged bolt of lightning left her outstretched hands.
The lightning struck the demon, making it flail in place, screaming a high-pitched, unearthly sound. The demon tried to escape the energy coming from her hands, but the lightning just kept coming, and in less than a minute, the demon had been vanquished.
As soon as the demon was gone, the lightning disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared. Still staring at the water in shock, Patty backed up slowly. When she bumped into something immovable, she whirled around to stare at Sam. The brief contact had broken her freeze over him, and Sam jerked forward as though still running, stopping himself just before he would have bowled her over.
"Patty," he gasped, and then she felt herself being pulled into a crushing hug against his chest.
"I'm okay," Patty whispered, her voice breaking as she clung to Sam. "I'm okay."
"What happened?" Sam demanded, his voice muffled with his face buried in her hair. "Patty, you froze me."
"I – I didn't want you to get hurt," she said, shakily, her face still buried against his chest. "Sam, the baby-"
"Is she-" Sam asked, suddenly, his eyes worried as his hand hovered over her abdomen, already glowing with healing energy.
"She's fine," Patty hastened to reassure him, watching as the fear faded from his eyes. "She's better than fine, actually. She vanquished the demon."
"What?" Sam asked, confused, and Patty chuckled at the expression on his face. "The baby? Are you sure?"
"Well, it was either the baby, or I spontaneously developed the ability to throw lightning," Patty told him, wryly. "Oh, and a pretty powerful shield, too. Can't forget that one."
"She has powers from the womb," Sam echoed, stunned.
"It's not unheard of," Patty reminded him. "I had premonitions when I was pregnant with Phoebe, telekinetic bursts with Prue-"
"But, none of them ever vanquished a demon," Sam broke in. "And, besides, they're the Charmed Ones."
"And the Elders seem to think that our daughter is going to be strong enough to fight in their stead," Patty finished. Looking out at the serene lake, she commented, softly, "I think I'm beginning to believe them."
Sam looked down at her stomach, one hand drifting down to rest over the baby. He smiled when she kicked his hand, stirring excitedly in response to his magic.
"She's going to be a daddy's girl, that's for sure," Patty told him, an affectionate smile on her face.
Sam sighed, wrapping his arms around Patty as he pulled her back to rest against his chest. His hands still rested against her abdomen. He was staring out at the lake with a pensive, closed-off expression on his face.
"What's on your mind?" Patty finally asked, after they'd stood in silence for several, long minutes.
"We can't keep going on like this, Patty," Sam told her, gravely.
"The demon needed to be vanquished," Patty replied, quietly. "I couldn't ask Mother to do it."
"And so you came down here by yourself, while pregnant with our unborn daughter," Sam commented. "Patty-"
"Sam, the campgrounds are in use from April to October," Patty told him. "Summer camp for the kids starts in two weeks. This place is going to be crawling with Innocents for the next five months. If I waited until after the baby was born to go after this demon, a dozen people could have lost their lives. I had to act, now."
"You shouldn't have had to act, at all," Sam said, sounding stressed.
"Well, who else is there?" Patty asked, rhetorically. "Sam, the Warren line has been the dominant magical force in San Francisco for over seventy years. For the last dozen, Mother and I have basically been the only ones capable of facing down demons."
"There are other witches in San Francisco," Sam protested, but Patty shook her head.
"Small-time practitioners," she corrected him. "No real power among them, unless you count the Montana and Calloway clans, but they've spent so long fighting each other that I doubt they'd ever be able to let go of their enmity long enough to fight evil." Shaking her head, ruefully, she added, "Why don't their Whitelighters do anything about that endless feud?"
"Their Whitelighters quit," Sam said. "And the Elders let them, which should tell you how sick and tired they are of this whole mess. Once they started manifesting energy balls, the Elders figured they'd gone dark, and decided to wash their hands of the whole thing."
"Great," Patty sighed. "So, I guess we can effectively count them out? Which still brings us back to our original issue," she reminded him. "Mainly that there's no one else out there who can fight. We're alone."
"You shouldn't be," Sam said, his lips pressed into a thin line. "I'm going to talk to some other Whitelighters. There have got to be other witches out there who can fight."
Two Months Later
"And how many demons were there?"
Patty sighed, leaning back against the couch cushions as she idly played with the tightly curled phone cord.
"Just the one," she reassured the woman on the other end of the line. "I think it was a warlock, but you need to be careful, he can-"
"Make my blood boil," Marina Nicolae finished for her, smoothly. "Yes, Patty, you've told me. Three times already."
"Sorry," Patty apologized. "I guess I'm just a worrier."
"Aren't we all?" Marina remarked, with a quiet chuckle. "Don't worry about it; this makes up for the half-dozen emergency phone numbers I gave you this morning when I dropped Ava off. How is she doing, by the way?"
Patty smiled at the note of barely-restrained urgency she could hear in the other woman's voice. "Ava's fine," she reassured her, as she looked over to where the three-year-old was playing with her own daughters. "She's been an absolute angel. Wish I could say the same about my own girls," she remarked, wryly, sighing in resignation when Piper stole one of Phoebe's toys, making the toddler wail in frustration.
"It sounds like you've got your hands full," Marina said, laughing.
"I'm not the only one," Patty reminded her, pointedly. "You and Lydia aren't going to have a picnic with that warlock. I just hate not being able to be out there, helping you-"
"Don't you even think about it," a new voice said, sharply, as the phone was taken out of Marina's hands. "You're eight months pregnant, dragă, and you're not to get up off that couch, do you understand?"
"You're worse than my husband, Lydia," Patty told the other woman, with a sigh.
"It's her big-sister tendencies," Marina spoke up, probably leaning over Lydia's shoulder to reach the phone. "You should have tried growing up with her."
"I want you two to promise me that you're going to be careful," Patty said, worriedly, the warlock flashing in her memory.
"We will," Marina told her. "Patty, we'll be fine. Between me, Lydia, and waffediyok, the warlock won't know what hit him. We'll call you when it's done."
Patty nodded, her hands tightening involuntarily on the phone as she hung up. She hadn't been lying when she'd told Marina that she hated not being out there, with them. But, the fact that she couldn't fight was the whole reason that she and Sam had set up the magical network in the first place.
Working with several other Whitelighters and their charges, they'd set up a network of witches and other magical practitioners across the country. It had taken time to get going, but now, instead of the solo hunting that had gone on, before, witches were teaming up to take down the demons that threatened them. That was how Patty had met Marina and Lydia; the Romani sisters had been aware of the presence of evil among them, but they hadn't fought demons until they'd been approached by Sam. The women had been happy to add their expertise, and Lydia's unusual powers, to the fight, though, and they'd proved themselves invaluable.
'I just wish they weren't out there, alone,' Patty thought, squeezing her hands into fists when she looked down at Ava, playing on the living room floor.
Sensing her gaze, the little girl looked up from the game she and Phoebe were playing, and she gave Patty a bright smile. She scrambled up onto the couch beside Patty, reaching inquisitively toward her stomach.
"It's okay," Patty said, encouragingly, when Ava hesitated, looking curiously up at her. "Maybe you'll feel her kick."
Ava giggled as she placed her hand gently on Patty's stomach, and then her eyes grew wide when she felt the baby kick under her palm.
"She wants to come out," she confided, solemnly, in Patty.
"It's a little early, yet," Patty told her. "How about waiting a month, hey, kiddo?" she suggested, to her unborn daughter, and Ava laughed again, jumping off the couch to rejoin Phoebe.
"I see we have a guest," her mother commented from the doorway, and Patty looked up as Penny walked across the room to sink down onto the couch beside her. "Her mother is out hunting demons?"
"Marina and Lydia are taking care of that warlock I saw, earlier," Patty replied. Rubbing at her temples, she added, "That's the third premonition this week. They're getting more frequent as she gets bigger."
"She's manifested all of her sisters' powers," Penny remarked, as she glanced down at her other three grandchildren.
"Among others," Patty said, wryly. "She's getting stronger by the day. I'm worried that the Elders will expect too much of her," she confided in her mother, quietly.
"She'll be able to handle it," Penny said, confidently. "She's a Halliwell, after all."
"She's not even born, yet," Patty started to protest, but then she stopped at the feel of an all-too-familiar twinge of pain running through her abdomen. "Oh, ow."
"Patty?" Penny asked, concern in her voice, and Patty shot her a shaky smile.
"Mother, I think you should call Sam," she told her, and the older woman shot her a suspicious look.
"Why?" she asked, cautiously.
"Because I don't think he'd like to miss the birth of his daughter," Patty replied, weakly.
Three hours later, Patty propped herself up in bed, holding out her hands as Sam carefully handed her their newborn daughter.
"She's beautiful," she breathed, as she cradled the infant to her chest. At the sound of her voice, her daughter opened bright blue eyes to stare, curiously, up at her. "What should we name her?" Patty went on, looking up at Sam.
"Well, it's got to be something that starts with P," Sam joked, smiling down at the two of them. "It wouldn't do to break tradition, after all."
"You know, I don't even know how that tradition got started," Patty told him. "The first Warren to have her name start with a P was Prudence Warren, but I don't know when it became a regular occurrence."
"Well, no matter how it started," Sam replied, "we're going to continue it. It seems to have brought everyone else good luck, after all." Thinking about it for a few moments, he added, "I don't think you've ever had a Paige in the family."
"You know, I don't think we have," Patty said. "Paige Melinda has a nice ring to it."
"Paige Melinda," Sam agreed. "I like it."
"But, is it going to be Halliwell or Wilder?" Patty asked him.
"Halliwell," Sam said, immediately. "You and your mother have made it into a formidable name in the Underworld."
"But, I want her to have something of yours, too," Patty insisted.
"She already does," Sam said, smiling fondly down at his baby girl. "She has my love."
"And on that sappy note," Penny spoke up, dryly, from the doorway, "I have some girls who would like to come say hello to their new sister."
Patty smiled at her oldest daughters as they crowded onto the bed around her, peering curiously down at the baby.
"Her name is Paige Melinda," Patty told them, proudly.
"She's all red and wrinkly," Prue said, frowning down at the infant. "She looks like an alien."
"I think she's beautiful, Mommy," Piper declared, shooting Prue a dirty look. "Can I hold her?"
"Maybe when she's a little stronger," Patty told her, and Piper nodded, settling back against the pillows beside Patty, tracing her finger across Paige's cheek. "What about you, Phoebe?" Patty went on, turning to her second-youngest daughter. "Do you want to see your new sister?"
Silently, Phoebe crept forward from where she'd been hovering at the edge of the bed, and she peered down at Paige with a blank expression on her face. Then, she looked up at Patty with an absolutely crestfallen and betrayed expression on her face, like she'd just realized that she was no longer the youngest and cutest thing in the room.
"What's the matter, Phoebe?" Patty asked, concerned. "Don't you like Paige?"
In answer, Phoebe blew a raspberry down at the baby, startling a thin, high-pitched wail from her. Then, Phoebe scrambled off the bed and bolted down the hallway, where Patty could hear the distant slam of her bedroom door.
"Clearly, this isn't a happy event for everyone," Penny remarked, as she looked after the departed toddler. "I'll go after her."
"Me, too," Prue declared, jumping off the bed and running out of the room. Patty sighed as she watched her go.
"At least you like your sister, right?" she asked Piper, who looked offended that Patty had even asked.
"I love you, Paige Melinda," she said, somberly, looking down at her new baby sister. "Even if Prue and Phoebe don't."
"Your sisters will come around," Sam told the little girl, who nodded up at her stepfather. "They just need some time."
"That's okay," Piper said. "I just get Paige all to myself, then." She looked inordinately happy with that thought, and Patty was cheered at the thought that at least one of her daughters was pleased with the new arrival.
As if she'd understood Piper's comment, Paige yawned and stretched, her grasping hand curling around her big sister's finger. Piper smiled in delight at the contact, cooing down at the baby.
"Mommy," Piper told her, "Paige can sleep in my room tonight, if you want."
"I think we'll save that option for when she's a little older," Patty said, sharing a smile with Sam. "I think for tonight, though, she's going to sleep in here, with me and Sam."
"Which looks like it's going to be right now," Sam added, as Paige let out another yawn, her eyes drooping shut. "I'll put her to sleep," he added, as he reached for his daughter.
"Goodnight," Piper chirped, kissing Paige on the cheek before she ran out of the room.
"Sleep well, little one," Patty added, as she passed Paige over to Sam's arms. "And welcome to the family."