Disclaimer: I own NOTHING except for the storyline and I make no money out of this either, all of this is merely to have some fun with Prue and Alice.
A/N: I know, I said I'd be updating last week and I didn't, I am so sorry about that, but here it is! I am not as happy with this particular chapter as I was with the others mainly because I suck at writing action, but it needs to be done when you mix Cullens and Halliwells, so it took a bit more time but now it's done. Having said that, my friend who used to beta for me is far too busy to do it anymore so I am looking for one, in the meantime all my mistakes are my own -though I try to keep them few and far between it doesn't always work out-. Now let's get on with the show shall we?
Please please please hit that review button at the button of the page, any criticism is appreciated as long as it's constructive :) Enjoy!
Once Prue and Alice were inside the manor all the Cullens alongside Phoebe were already in the living room waiting for them, and if Prue didn't know any better she would be certain she was looking at a collection of statues, the sight was made comical when she turned to look at her sister who was looking really uncomfortable amongst five unmoving vampires; the youngest Halliwell was trying really hard not to fidget around without much success, and every move she made seemed to catch the eye of either Carlisle or Rosalie who looked quite amused for different reasons: while Carlisle's smile was kind amusement, Rosalie's appeared to be slightly devilish as if enjoying Phoebe's discomfort far more than she should. Prue then turned to look at Alice who was looking quite amused herself, the eldest Halliwell then felt a squeeze on the hand held by Alice followed by a pull in the direction of the living room.
"Sorry for the delay" said Prue trying not to laugh at the accusing glare Phoebe threw at her.
"We just got here ourselves, no need for you to concern yourself Prue" said Carlisle in a gentle tone, but as it was the norm in this situations, Rosalie interrupted before anything else could be said or done.
"We should get down to business, we are not here to socialize and the faster we finish this, the faster we can leave San Francisco and pretend none of this ever happened"
Everyone rolled their eyes at Rosalie followed by what sounded a lot like "this is why I apologized beforehand" by Alice who reluctantly pulled her hand from Prue's and seemed to debate for a second before going to take a seat by her husband's side , his arm around her shoulders -for the first time in centuries- not soothing nor comforting but instead nearly suffocating, and without noticing Alice tensed at his touch which only made Jasper frown. Prue now feeling strangely cold and uncomfortable without the pixie by her side, went to sit next to her sister who's warmth did nothing to take away the cold.
"Though my daughter's comment was unnecessary" said Carlisle throwing a pointed look at Rosalie which went ignored "I agree an immediate discussion is necessary if we are to be prepared for the next attack. You said you already had some information regarding the… demon that attacked you, would you mind sharing it with us?"
Prue turned to look at Phoebe who took that as her cue to begin the explanation. "There are quite a few things that we know about; the main one is that what we are dealing with is bigger than anything we have ever faced before: Satan's wives."
Phoebe then handed the Book of Shadows opened on the page where the Sephyl Sisters were portrayed. He read the page rapidly to his family who were now looking properly stunned at the end of the reading, the only one that didn't bat an eyelash was Alice for whom the information was not new.
"When you…" Emmet began stammering a little with his words "When you mentioned Satan's wives to Rosalie back in the hospital I thought it was a metaphor, not that you actually meant it literally"
"I don't tend to joke around about potential death threats to my family. In any case we know that the one that we are up against right now is Lilith."
Esme was in shock from everything that had been said so far, so at this she interjected "Goodness, she broke free?"
The Halliwell's at that moment thought that when the vampires looked scared while supposedly being immortal, then there was no hope for the human population, and not for the first time Phoebe considered carrying her sister to the other side of the Earth… maybe New Zealand? She was sure Alice would help her, but then again these were Satan's wives and that meant that there was no place on Earth that would be safe, she wondered if Leo's power allowed him to travel between planets. Prue was not thinking about herself though, she was thinking on how to keep Alice and her family safe and how she desperately wished she could reassure poor panicked Esme, but sadly what she had to say next was anything but reassuring.
"No Esme, she hasn't freed herself yet. For all we know the girl that currently has the pendant is working for it…her…" She then stopped herself to take a breath and stop herself from going mad, this was so confusing. After a few moments she regained her composure and addressed the rest of the vampire family "We don't really know if she does it by means of a curse or by choice though, the only thing we do know is that with the beryl in her possession she is extremely powerful, virtually unbeatable and can end a human's life extremely fast. It does not seem to work on vampires apparently, seeing as how Alice is still alive despite being in direct contact with the beryl and its shield"
"It doesn't harm a vampire" reassured Alice "At least in the sense that it cannot feed from our blood, but the only reason I could stand being so close to it was because of my restraint and because I was more worried about you than my hunger Prue, a vampire with any less restraint would have listened to the hunger and fed on the closest living being, on you Prue. We need to be extremely careful when we come across her again" finished Alice in a determined tone that left no room for discussion.
"So basically what you are saying is that we have a nutcase running around with a heck of a weapon. Brilliant. What does she want and how do we kill her, it… whatever" asked Emmet. All the goofiness gone from his face leaving only a very serious bear of a man.
It was Prue's turn to answer "Well we don't know how to kill her, we are still waiting for more information on that, but we know she wants Alice's ring. The sapphire ring she was looking for this morning at Buckland's"
"You mean the ring that the book said has Eishet concealed in? But Alice said that the ring was her birth mother's, how could it possibly be the same one?" asked Esme.
Alice looked just about to cry, and if she had the ability to do so she would be; Jasper tightened his hold on his wife's shoulders but she didn't respond to it as usual, she didn't lean on his shoulder for support, instead she threw a desperate and lost look at Prue who smiled back reassuringly.
"The ring is an heirloom." Alice said as if that alone explained everything, which clearly didn't when everyone except the Halliwell's looked at her expectantly. "It was only meant to pass down generations of Eishet's line, which basically means there is a fifty percent chance of me being Eishet's heir."
The silence was deafening. Almost everyone trying to digest the news. Prue wished so hard to be able to go and comfort the pixie but that was Jasper's place now, not hers. Despite knowing this she couldn't help but turn to look at Alice and mouth "it will be ok" which earned her a slight quick and nearly unnoticeable quirk of the lips from the pixie.
Before anyone could say anything else, a portal like the one that opened earlier that day at Buckland's opened now inside the Halliwell's living-room. Six demons walked out of it and stood still just like last time, only moving to let Leda pass. Prue hadn't even blinked when she noticed Alice crouching in front of her, turning slightly she saw Carlisle standing in front of her sister, Emmet in front of Esme and Rosalie and Jasper had moved behind the three vampires, she assumed that it was meant for him to be unseen, but she couldn't be sure and so she directed her attention back to her surroundings hoping to every deity that existed that they got out of this alive.
"Well look what we've got here" hissed Leda and it made Phoebe's skin break into goosebumps just listening to it but she stood in place unmoving assessing the situation in case she had to engage in battle with the demons. Looking at the blue ones their hands looked like a charged wire so she assumed those were some electric type demons, the black ones were easy to figure out since they smelt burnt… those would be the most dangerous ones she thought, she knew that if she were to hit them she'd end up incinerated and vampires couldn't touch fire either, and if she touched the blue ones she'd be electrocuted, though the vampires would probably be ok… well this will be interesting thought Phoebe.
"You're still alive" hissed Leda once again while looking at Prue and the eldest of the Halliwell's thought that she sounded pleasantly surprised, and then chalked the whole thing as crazy, why in the world would their enemy be happy to see her alive?.
Alice however just got closer to Prue "Leave" growled Alice "Now"
Leda then turned to look at Alice, and all the 'pleasantness' from her face if there had indeed been any, was wiped away in a second to be replaced by anger and disgust. "You are still alive as well, how nice." However there was nothing 'nice' in her tone, instead sounding like she had just tasted something foul, like spitting venom. "Have you thought about y proposal? Will you give me the ring?"
Alice snarled then "Are you deaf? I said leave." Repeated Alice trying hard not to show how scared she was but not sure if she was succeeding. I am not going to give you the ring, now less than ever. And you are not going to hurt her again, so leave. NOW"
"Very well then." Leda hissed in a bored tone. With a lazy wave of her hand the demons closed in on all of them; Alice by now had told her family to be careful of the black ones that could light themselves on fire and moved in to attack the one closest to her and Prue, luckily it happened to be the blue kind. Prue was busy helping Carlisle with the demons closing in on him, he was trying to use the same tactic Alice had that morning trying to place the blue one in front of the black one but without much success, Prue then send the black one flying across the room, luckily he landed next to a blue one that startled and attacked his comrade without noticing until it was too late, Jasper in the meantime was controlling some of the demons to attack themselves, but two of them somehow ended up with Phoebe between them and before the youngest Halliwell could even duck out of the way the black one was already throwing fire at the one behind her, out of nowhere a blur hit her side and threw her out of the way before she could get hit, when Phoebe turned to look at who'd saved her she ended up looking at a very annoyed Rosalie who had almost ended up incinerated trying to save Phoebe, luckily for them both Rosalie had only a small burnt in her right arm. Emmett was taking care of a blue one by jumping on its back and breaking his neck, and the rest of them were dealt with by Alice and Prue who was using her ability to astral-project to cheat the demons into moving as close to their counterpart as possible and attack each other by making them think they were attacking her. During the entire fight Alice didn't move too far from Prue, always keeping an eye on her and Alice who up until that point assumed Prue was somewhat defenseless because she didn't know any of Prue's or Phoebe's abilities felt very proud, but not any less protective of the eldest Halliwell.
Once all the demons were dealt with, Leda was looking livid. "Fine, if you want to do this the hard way then that is fine by me" Without another word the beryl lifted on its own accord towards Prue, but since Alice was in front of her nothing happened and Leda stayed there looking quite frustrated, she then turned to Phoebe who somehow was now unprotected and fell to the ground moaning in pain. Prue seeing this tried to move the beryl away from her sister telepathically without success, the move only causing Emmett to run towards Leda without thinking of the consequences.
"Emmet, NO!"
It was hard to pinpoint who yelled louder; being closest to him Carlisle tried pulling him away but by then it was too late, Emmet was already in Leda's personal space causing the shield to project and that was when chaos broke out.
Carlisle send Emmet flying and caused the huge man to fall on the coffee table, Jasper then ran towards Phoebe who was weak from blood loss though not yet passed out, Esme then tried holding him only to have Jasper threw her towards the window and have Rosalie running towards her, Alice in the meantime had moved herself and Prue closer to Phoebe and was now busy trying to protect the Halliwell's from both the beryl and Jasper who was now closing in one her, but she couldn't do all of it by herself and Leda was still drawing blood from a weakening Phoebe . Suddenly that wasn't a problem anymore, somehow the Cullens had regrouped and now Rosalie and Esme were guarding Phoebe while Emmett and Carlisle tried keeping Jasper away from hurting Prue that now seemed to be his new target. In the midst of all the chaos, Carlisle was giving instructions to his family about getting the Halliwells out of the manor in a tone too low for Leda to pick up, and before Leda could think about her next move the Cullen's grabbed the sisters and ran out of the manor, Emmett taking Jasper the opposite side but all of them getting as far away from the manor as fast as they could. Prue's thoughts were running wild, and while sinking in the pixie's arms she begged and prayed to any deity that might be listening to let them get out of this alive.
