Penny flung her arm and the child-demon was thrown against the wall. Growling, she stood and brushed off her dress. The witch again raised her arm and the demon raised her gloved hands in truce. "You summoned me, Penny," she stated as Penny looked at her quizzically. "You invoked Heaven and Hell, Heaven ignored you. But Hell didn't. My name is Ayanna, and I am a restoration demon." She bowed.
A chair dragged itself across the room and stopped behind Ayanna, who sat down. Keeping her arm ready to attack, Penny used her power to flip through the Book of Shadows. "There's nothing in here about restoration demons."
"Why would there be? We are rarely heard of in the Underworld and even more unknown among witches. I am 7600 years old and few others than the Source know my name."
"If you're a demon, why would you answer my call?" Penny was growing even more suspicious.
"A former Source was near death and I refused to restore him because he killed many of my kind. He used the last of his magic to keep me in this infantile body for eternity and you have the power to free me. In exchange for your daughter of course." She waved her hand and an image of Patty appeared, her arms open to embrace her mother. Penny ran to the vision, but it faded away just as she began to close her arms around it.
Tears began to warm behind her eyes and she slapped Ayanna, knocking the demon to the floor. "Damn you! How could you be so cruel!" Her only response was a smile. "Why would you restore a good witch, anyway?"
Ayanna stood, glaring at the childless mother. "Because your daughter would not dramatically shift the balance of power in your favor. She's not powerful enough. And in exchange for my adulthood back, I would be happy to give her to you."
At that moment, a warlock blinked in. Penny tried to throw him but he blinked out of the way. He threw a ceremonial athame at Ayanna but Penny magically threw it back at him, hitting him in the chest. Ayanna smiled at her savior as the warlock exploded. "We have to move quickly. Someone must know I'm here and if they kill me, you'll never see Patty again."
As that reality sank into the witch's brain, trunks and boxes and chairs threw themselves in front of the door and window, casting the room in darkness. She lit a candle and frantically searched her mind for a spell her mother had taught her years before when she was a girl: "Hear my plea, circling arms protect me. Let no evil enter these halls, now raise a wall." As she finished the incantation, a blue mist appeared around her feet and spread outward, enveloping the entire manor before disappearing. "We have a few hours, now bring back Patty."
Ayanna wagged her finger. "It's not that simple, dear. We need supplies, hard-to-get supplies, and you have to be the one to get them."
The witch nodded like a madwoman on a desperate quest. "Whatever we need, I'll get them, no matter what the cost."
"Good. There are three ingredients. For the first, you will need to open a portal. A very specific portal."
Penny turned on her heel. "To where?" She stared suspiciously at the innocent-looking hellion.
"Tolla, one the heavenly dimensions. Obviously, you'd have to go alone." Ayanna sat down and began to play with an antique dollhouse. Sighing, she threw one of the plastic inhabitants into the air and blew it up, laughing at the ashes.
"Stop that! It's Prue's favorite dollhouse! Now what do I need in Tolla?" She asked impatiently as she rummaged through a trunk looking for talismans.
"This." Penny turned just in time to see an athame fly straight towards her face. Waving her arm, the knife veered off course and stuck in a wall. "You'll need that to cut the unicorn's heart out."
The witch pulled the athame out of the wall and walked menacingly closer to Ayanna. "Why don't we just use your heart?"
The demon almost fell out of her chair as she laughed. "Because the restoration spell requires a pure heart, and mine is anything but!"
The grief-wrought sorceress laid the purity talisman in the center of the ring of candles and sprinkled white rose petals around it. "Move me now through time and space, take me now to a different place."
A white tornado appeared in the ring, and the petals flashed as they disappeared off the face of the earth. Penny turned to Ayanna. "Stay here, you'll be safe!" She yelled as she jumped into the roaring winds and vanished.
"You're the one in danger, Penny," Ayanna said to no one. She pulled a venom-green crystal from her pockets. Cradling it in her hands, she whispered softly. "You know what to do."
The first thing Penny felt was peace, a tranquility so tangible it almost felt like a blanket keeping her warm on a cold winter night. She walked through it, searching for what she so desperately sought. It was so bright she could barely see, but she could sense the joy all throughout the perfect world. She heard a gallop far off in the distance and a strong neigh echoed shortly after.
Penny passed through something unseen and found she was wearing pure white robes and stood in a flourishing meadow with a crystalline lake nearby. Even as the sorrow raged inside her with the power of a tempest, she wanted nothing more than to lie on the grass and spend eternity in this place.
She was about to fall asleep when something white flickered through the meadow faster than light. A unicorn! Suddenly, she remembered: Patty, the girls, the demon, and her mission. As the magnificent stallion raced by again, it was tripped by an invisible force and fell to its knees. Penny knelt beside it, gently caressing its silver horn. The unicorn looked at her with its luminous cerulean eyes and seemed to smile.
The witch placed both hands on the magical steed's body and focused on its heart, making it beat slower and slower. As the beautiful creature died, the light in its eyes ebbed until it was a dim, flickered, and then was extinguished forever. She pulled the athame from her robes and held it over her head. As she cut into the unicorn, she was unaware that the sky above her was becoming as red as the grass surrounding the body.
TBC
Read and Review! ~ SS