The First Son
Part 9: Reliving the Past
Piper burst into tears, throwing her arms into the air. "My God, she's dead! I'll never see my baby again!"
Leo rushed over to her, wrapping a strong arm around her shoulders. He whispered in her ear, trying to calm her hysterics. "He didn't say that, he never said she was dead, sweetie. Calm down. Please, calm down." He glanced over at Rueben, who nodded furiously.
"Yeah, she was alive, I heard her crying, remember? She was crying so loudly." He plopped down into the chair where his father had been sitting. "Don't worry, Mom. We'll get her back. I swear."
His mother sniffled a bit, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Don't swear. I hate profanity. Just promise."
Rueben grinned. "Okay. I promise."
"Great, now that we've got all that settled, I have to get back to Prue." Leo stood up and kissed Piper gently on the lips. "Hope you don't mind." Piper shook her head and he orbed away.
"I just pray that he gets back here soon."
***
The hours were drawing shorter, and each moment that passed choked the witch with the firm grip of death. The moon would soon be new, and then her feast would be waiting. She rocked the cradle with her foot, anticipating her first taste, the first soul in a thousand years. She imagined the warmth that would settle over her, and the refreshing light that would bring back her youth. A youth that was not simulated with a spell and some fancy herbs. She paced the floor, her bright red hair flashing in the glow of the firelight. All fake, her entire image, an imitation of what she used to be. She used to be beautiful. All the men had loved her, all had wanted nothing more than to fawn over her and bring her gifts of the finest nature. But none of them had caught her fancy… none but Leonard. Even after her father had given her away in marriage to Bertram, she had fantasized about him in her bed, about bearing his children. Nothing could have gotten in her way.
Except true love.
Leonard had married her rival, the only other woman in her village with beauty that rivaled her own, which meant he had no need for her. Even after he got his wench of a wife pregnant, he refused to come to her bed. So she gave him a little push, with a spell to call a lover. And, of course, like all spells, there were consequences. Bertram caught them making love in his bed, and cast her out, with the child she had conceived by Leonard tucked safely in her belly. She fled to the woods, to the cottage that her mother had been raised in, and sought solace in it's empty walls. She walked to the village each day for three months, hoping to catch a glimpse of her child's father. There was nary a word of him until the day she saw him swinging from the gallows. She wept, condemning the men who had hanged her lover, and began to plot her revenge. With rare herbs and a parchment of her own spells, the witch prepared for the day when she could take from them what they had taken from her.
A soul.
***
"So what's the plan?" Paige poked her head in between the front seats of the car. "We got Piper out of the hospital for what?"
Phoebe glared at her in the rearview mirror. "We need to find out what Prue knows just as much as Leo, and it'll be a lot more practical for everyone to be in one place rather than having Leo orb back and forth from the hospital."
"Exactly," Piper put in. "And I don't think that I could put up with that hospital food for much longer. Seriously, I could turn that place around in one night."
"Was that a joke? Did my depressed sister just make a joke?" Phoebe glanced at Piper and smiled, glad that she was seeing her sister looking something other than despondent.
"Oh yeah, I'm here all week."
"Two! That's two!" Paige kissed Piper on the cheek and settled back into her seat as they pulled into the driveway of the Manor. She unfastened Rueben's safety belt and jumped out of the Jeep to help Piper up the stairs. Rueben crashed past them and bounded into the house. Just as the door slammed behind him, the attic windows shattered above them, showering them in a wave of glass and ash.
***
Her child was born in the dead of winter. She had done it herself, without the aid of a midwife, and without the added warmth of a fire. The child turned blue before the night was over, and she died before the morning came. The witch shivered at the memory of her stiff daughter in her arms, blaming the townspeople for her misfortune. With the death of the baby, she found the last straw that led her into the square the next morning. Still weak from childbirth, she staggered as she climbed the stairs of the chapel, and placed her sacrifice on the altar in front of the magistrate. He gasped in horror as she unwrapped the blanket, revealing her lifeless child. Slowly, she began chanting, the practiced words slipping effortlessly from her tongue. She set the blanket afire, allowing the stench of burning flesh to enter her nostrils and intoxicate her mind. The magistrate took to one knee and crossed himself, praying to the blessed virgin that he would be spared from the demon magic. He coughed and gagged as the smoke choked him, and fainted away on the floor. The witch ignored her interruption and continued chanting, dragging grim shadows of gray into her outstretched hand. The souls gathered and formed one spirit, which she clenched in her fist for a moment, feeling the power flow through her, before swallowing the mass whole.
***
"Christ, Prue! Look what you did to the attic!" Leo wiped soot from his eyes as he shouted at his dead sister-in-law. "It'll take weeks to fix this!"
Prue heaved at her ruined dress and turned to Leo. "I was just trying to help! I'm sorry, but it has been five years since I've cast a spell!"
"What the hell happened here?!" Piper burst through the attic door with her sisters dragging behind. "Why are you trying to destroy my house?"
Leo caught her as she collapsed from exertion into his arms. He glared evilly at Phoebe and Paige, who tried hard to seem as innocent as possible. "She didn't try to destroy the house, she was just trying to cast a summoning spell. Obviously the only witches she could conjure were you three. And why are you here anyway? Piper needs to stay in the hospital, she's still weak from the surgery."
"Hey, she was the one who checked herself out. I just drove her home. Don't go blaming me for your wife's stubborn streak." Phoebe crossed her arms over her chest in defiance and brush glass shards off the chair where she had intended to sit. "Jesus, Prue. What did you do?"
Her sister huffed and slammed the book shut. "I was just trying to be able to tell you where Krista was hiding, since I'm the one who brought her here in the first place. It's my fault that Mel's gone, so now I have to try and bring her back."
Piper frowned at her and shook her head. "It's not your fault, honey. Don't blame yourself."
"How can I not? Your baby is gone, all because that stupid little…" she trailed off, muttering obscenities to herself rather than let Rueben here her fowl language. "I just want to help."
Leo took the opportunity to butt in, stepping into the circle of sisters to get their attention. "If you really want to help, here's what you have to do…"
***
She could still feel the children's souls moving about inside her, struggling ferociously to break free. They had come to her so easily, but after a millennia in the dark recesses of her body, they began to get rowdy. Each one took its turn bashing against her heart, causing tremendous seizures to rip through her limbs, and a chill to settle over her. She still felt the power looming within her, as though she had captured their souls just yesterday. She closed her eyes and groped in the farthest corners of her mind to remember every detail of that day.
She was in the chapel, breathing in the stench of her child's charred flesh. Her daughter's name would have been Eliza, had she lived through the night. Her name would have been Eliza, if those people hadn't tossed her out into the cold like a rabid animal. She heard crying, a sea of moaning as the mothers carried their children through the streets to the church for a blessing. The door opened for them, and a gust of wind pushed them with the bodies into the front hall. The witch continued to chant, still calling for the final soul of the final child in all of Wales.
The soul of her lover's legitimate child.
She pulled at her strings of life, yanking with all her might, but her mother gripped them too strongly, and her bond with the child was broken. She screamed her anguished cry as the mothers closed in on her, bearing the bodies of their children like the rag dolls of a toddler. As if possessed, they began reciting an ancient curse. It jerked her backward, towards the flaming altar.
"No! I won't go without it! No! Piper, you'll never be rid of me!"
she shrieked, calling out to her lover's wife in agony as the curse wrenched her into the blaze. She clenched her fist one last time as she was dragged by some ungodly force, down into a pit from which there was no escape. There she sat, for a thousand years, waiting for her moment of retribution.***
"Are you sure this is going to work? I mean, her daughter was only a baby when she was killed. We can't just go around summoning the spirits of babies, can we?" Paige paced the length of the attic while Phoebe chewed on her pen cap thoughtfully. Piper sat in Leo's lap in the chair in the corner and Prue floated precariously above them all.
"Well, Eliza is our only link to Krista. Without her, we don't have any hope of finding out how to vanquish her. She only has one weakness." Leo massaged Piper's shoulders gently as she leaned back against him. "And besides, just because the body doesn't grow, that doesn't mean a spirit can't. After you die, you can become whatever you want to be. Most babies choose to be older, young adults even."
Piper looked up at him and squinted. "Babies choose? It's a baby, how can it choose?"
"Despite how they act, Piper, babies have structured thought processes too. They think and desire and dislike just as much as we do, if not more. They're just not capable of showing it outright." Her husband kissed her forehead and resumed her massage. She smiled and settled back into his body.
"Smart aleck."
Phoebe stood up, waving her finished product in the air. "Alright, I've got it! Let's get this over with, before I change my mind again!" She knocked over a few chairs so their chanting space was larger. Leo helped Piper to her feet, and the four sisters read aloud from the crumpled sheet of paper.
"Bring us forth a soul so pure
To enlighten and endure
Her mother's errors we must undo
Her mind will give us our only clue."
A shimmer of lights appeared in the candles that they had set up earlier, forming the body of a twelve year old girl. She was thin, almost too thin, and lanky. Her face was the perfect image of Krista's, except the piercing blue eyes that reminded Piper of someone.
"Father!" The girl flung herself at Leo, wrapping her arms around his waist and squeezing tightly. The breath was forced from his lungs and he struggled to remove her vice-like grip from his body. "Oh, Father! They told me so much about you! I've always wanted to meet you, and now… oh, I'm so happy!" Her smiled faded as she looked up at Leo. "You're not my father, are you?"
Leo shook his head. "No, I'm sorry."
She shook her red hair out. "It's just as well. I don't know what I would have said after 'I'm so happy' anyway. I was a bastard, after all… so, um, who are you?"
Piper, who felt sorry for the girl, bent down to talk to her face to face. "I'm Piper, and these are my sisters, Phoebe, Paige, and Prue. Leo is my husband. It just so happens that your mommy has kidnapped our daughter, and we thought that maybe you could help us out."
Eliza grunted. "It's not necessary to talk to me like a child. I'm a lot older than you are."
"Oh. Sorry." Piper blushed and stepped back a bit, somewhat embarrassed.
"Don't worry about it. It's a common thing. So what do you need to know? I think I can answer pretty much any question you may have." The girl glanced at each of the sisters, then at Leo, and then at Rueben, who was hiding in a cardboard box. She smiled at him and he ducked back into his lair.
"Can you tell us how to vanquish her?" Paige posed the question flatly, praying that it didn't frighten her off.
Eliza froze for a moment, drawing in her breath sharply. She had expected the question sooner or later, but she had preferred later. She sighed and let out the air in her lungs slowly. "Yes, I can tell you how to vanquish her."
A/N: Oh, God. This is taking a lot long than I though it would. I thought I'd be done after 10 parts, but now it looks as though I may have to write 12. Great, just what I need. An unfinished fic hanging over my head. Now I have to finish it twice as fast! Yippee for you, bad news for me. Oh well, I had fu with this part. Everything is sort of coming together now, don't you think? Things are being explained, etc. Feedback, people. I need feedback. Thanks! TTYL!
O_o --- That's me
*Dimples*
