Chapter Five: Not All Quiet on the Home Front
Leo looked horror-stricken. Piper groaned in frustration. Paige laughed so hard that the water almost sloshed out of its glass.
"This is not funny, Paige," Piper snapped.
"At least we agree on something," Leo mumbled. Piper shot him a dark glare.
"We wouldn't even be in this situation if you would've just told me what's going on," she reminded him, her words dripping with impatience and annoyance.
"So this is all my fault now?" he shouted, "If you had just left the issue alone everything would've been fine, but no, you even had to drag your sister into this and now look what's happened." He gestured to where Phoebe lay on the couch.
"You're blaming me for what happened to Phoebe?" Piper screeched, "I couldn't have helped that."
Feeling forgotten, Paige slipped out of the kitchen unnoticed. The raging voices continued behind her as she walked to the couch and knelt beside Phoebe with the water.
"Here you go Phebes," she held out the glass, "Do you need anything else?"
Phoebe took a big wet drink before answering. "Um, yeah, could you help me sit up?" she asked, a bit embarrassed that she couldn't accomplish the task on her own.
"Sure sweetie," Paige smiled.
With her little sister's help, Phoebe managed to wrench her sore stiff body into a sitting position. She wobbled a moment, and blinked back fuzzy spots in front of her eyes. Her head was pounding and she still felt a little dizzy. Phoebe messaged her right temple with her hand; her eyes started to drift close. "I must have been hurt badly," she mumbled quietly, more to herself than to her sister.
Paige took in her sister's appearance with a look of concern. She seemed so frail and tiny sitting there. Her brown eyes had been glazed over with exhaustion, and dark bags hung under them. Even in the growing twilight, she could see her sister's face was stanch white as though all of the blood had been scared out of her veins. Under the heavy weight of a red afghan, her posture was slumped and sullen. The hunched body was barely supporting itself, and Phoebe seemed to be sinking lower and lower; a wax figure melting in the sun with her fake glassy stare and fragile, porcelain, bloodless skin. Putting an arm around her waist, Paige tried to keep Phoebe up. With her other hand, she brushed back a few disheveled strands of her hair. The locks were damp with sweat. She was also missing an earring, Paige noticed. Who ever did this had blasted the life right out of her. Demon fighting often left them with an adrenaline rush, but Phoebe just looked dead to the world. "Maybe you should go lie down in your room," Paige suggested.
Phoebe shook her head and her eyes fluttered back open. "I'll be fine," she asserted. And she did look a little better; as though she were bringing herself back from an inner world of dark reverie.
"Who did this?" Paige asked quietly, "was it the demon you saw in your premonition?"
Phoebe nodded, "did you find anything about him in the Book of Shadows?"
"A little," Paige pulled the book closer to them from its perch on the table. "Is that the symbol you saw?" She pointed to a complex, slithery, and vine-like scrawl. It looked like the embodiment of chaos itself. The design's shape was unrecognizable; it had no structure or order, and, most strikingly, it had no balance. Everything it the magical world, good or evil, has balance. The strong magical thread that ran through the sisters felt off tilt just by looking at the odd symbol. Its foreignness spoke to them hauntingly; its words vibrated through their being.
"That's it," Phoebe nodded, "the guy had it branded on his arm or something."
"That's not all I found-"
"Wait," Phoebe interrupted, "where's Piper?"
Paige opened her mouth to answer when she realized that there were no more yelling voices coming from the kitchen. Everything was quiet. She wasn't quite sure what to make of that.
"Piper? Leo?" she called out cautiously to the kitchen. No answer. Paige sighed and hoped they hadn't killed each other.
"Those two still fighting?" Phoebe ventured a guess.
"Oh, yeah," Paige nodded, and called out to the kitchen again. After a few seconds of silence, she went to investigate.
She found Piper and Leo standing there, both stone silent, and giving each other gloomy stares. The one arm they now shared dangled uselessly and almost comically between them. Piper's one free hand rested firmly on her hip. Neither looked ready or willing to budge. Paige sure hoped her niece knew what she was doing. Being an only child for most of her life, Paige couldn't think of anyone, even out of those she loved, that she would want to be literally attached to of a long period of time.
Clearing her throat, Paige prepared to sound as forceful as possible. "I don't know what's going on between you two, but we have a demon situation that needs our full attention." She let those words sink in, and then continued, "So, if you two are finished acting like three year olds, Phoebe and I need you in the den."
Weather it was Paige's tone or the mention of demons, something got through the stony figures. They mumbled their compliance and headed into the den with Paige. Piper looked almost relieved to have diversion in front of her, something to take her mind off her marital troubles. Everyone solves problems in their own way; Piper choose to kick demon ass. The eldest Halliwel found a certain solace in demon hunting that the other two couldn't understand. Paige suspected that even her husband, the peacekeeping whitelighter, didn't fully grasp that part of his wife's psyche.
When Piper and Leo walked onto the den, Phoebe became fully animated for the first time since Leo had brought her home. She burst out laughing at the odd sight of the literally attached couple. They glared at her but she didn't take the hint and kept on laughing.
"What.happened?" she managed to choke out in between chuckles.
"Our niece decided to help Piper and Leo work out their marital discord," Paige answered, merriment and laughter sparkling in her eyes. She tried to keep her composure, but her red lips twitched up into a smile despite her best efforts.
"You said something about a demon?" Piper inquired, cold and business like.
Immediately, Paige's expression turned neutral again, and she looked down at the Book of Shadows. "The demon that attacked Phoebe had this symbol of his arm," she pointed to the open page.
Leo crinkled his brow as he and Piper peered down at the book, "I've never seen that before," he remarked.
"No one has for about five hundred years," Paige informed them, "this symbol is associated with a demon named Shiva. He was last seen around the end of the Middle Ages."
"Okay, yeah, whatever," Piper waved her hand dismissively, "so, how do we vanquish him?"
"It doesn't say," Paige sighed, "evidently, no one has ever seen him and lived, let alone been able to vanquish him."
Phoebe suddenly tensed up. "Do you think he'll come back after me?" she asked, "I did see him after all."
Paige shook her head, "I don't think who you saw was Shiva."
"What do you mean?" Piper asked, "Who else besides Shiva would have that symbol?"
Paige pointed to the passage in the book as she talked, "It says here that Shiva is very powerful, and that he often lends some of his powers to other demons in exchange for favors. If the demon does as Shiva asks then the demon keeps the powers."
"So, then the guy who attacked me was one of Shiva's foot soldiers?" Phoebe asked.
"Most likely," Paige nodded.
"Question," Piper interjected, "how does this help us get rid of him? And where has he been for the last few hundred years?"
"I don't know. On both accounts," Paige shrugged, then turned towards Leo, "Do you think you could check with the Elders or would they mind you dropping by in your.um.current state?" she asked barely concealing a snicker.
"No other beings besides whitelighters are supposed to enter the Elder's domain," he told her seriously, "they wouldn't like me dragging Piper up there under any circumstances." He'd said the word "dragging" as though he were referring to a great cumbersome burden. Piper scowled at him.
"Well then, I guess you two need to work things out if you want any chance of breaking the spell," Phoebe advised them.
* * *
The darklighter stepped into the dark musty warehouse cautiously, and a little bit afraid. His new powers weren't completely drained, but he didn't have enough left to complete Shiva's task. He needed more. Inspecting the warehouse's inky black corners, he looked for the powerful demon. He wasn't quite sure where to find Shiva. Shiva always managed to find him.
"What are you doing here?" a soft, raspy, and slithery voice asked from behind him. "Did you do as I asked?"
The darklighter didn't turn around; he knew all he would find was darkness. "No, I need more powers and a little more time," he demanded boldly.
A low rattling hiss sounded from the shadows. The intimidating rumble grew louder and assaulted him from all sides. The demon felt like a human might feel in the rain forest. Completely overwhelmed both with ones own inferiority and the supremacy and cruelty of Mother Nature. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck. A smoldering white light flashed behind his eyes, and fried the delicate flesh of his cornea. He clawed as his face and eyes trying to dig out the source of the pain. Thick crimson rivets flowed down his face. He was crying blood, and screaming like a wild animal. The horrendous sound suddenly stopped when the demon exploded. All that was left, a cocoon of ash, clung to thin air in the shape of a body before dropping unceremoniously to the ground.
Shiva regarded the pile of ash stoically; he could not take pleasure in the kill, nor could he become enraged with the demon's incompetence. No, this plan needed patience and careful methodical thought.
He looked up as another darklighter emerged from the shadows. This one was promising.
"Now you know what I'm capable of," Shiva hissed at the new darklighter, "do not fail me."
The darklighter made a slight bow, "I will not master."
"Very well," Shiva reached out a clawed-scaly hand and touched the demon's left arm. The sizzling of burning flesh was heard, but the demon did not flinch. Ribbons of smoke curled away from his reddening skin and twisted around Shiva's hand like snakes. The darklighter's arm became nothing more that a painful throb, but his thirst for power overcame the agony. Biting his lip with anticipation, he waited, on the verge of impatience, for the transformation to be complete.
When Shiva, at last, removed his hand, the odd mark was branded on the demon. The slayer of whitelighters smiled as the power surged through him. He felt every nerve tingle with a bombardment of senses. Senses that he hadn't felt before. Everything around him was suddenly new and very large, almost overwhelming.
Stretching out his left hand, he found it had been twisted into a tight deformed fist by the pain that still gnawed at his nerves. Pulsating blue veins spider-webbed across the hand, and tiny white blisters had bubbled to the surface as though he were literally bursting with powerful energy. Slowly, he forced his fingers open. The muscles straining with this effort felt like they were tearing away from the bone. His hand was on fire, and seemed like it would explode from the inside out. He concentrated on the pain, and Shiva watched. This was a test and he knew it.
The stinging ache was unique and exotic as though it were caused by hungry little fire ants crawling underneath the skin. He imagined the grainy feeling of those tiny bodies moving and biting within his flesh. His nose flared and he grunted with the effort. Finally, the five digits extended to their full length. The pain dulled and disappeared.
The darklighter pooled his new energies and formed a glowing ball that hovered above his palm. He sent the orb zipping across the dark warehouse. It cut through the blackness with a haunting illumination, and exploded on the far wall, creating a large hole.
"This will do very nicely," he smiled again and turned back to Shiva, "you shall get what you want," he promised. "Those witches won't stand in my way."
TBC. (If you want to know what happens next, please send reviews!)
Leo looked horror-stricken. Piper groaned in frustration. Paige laughed so hard that the water almost sloshed out of its glass.
"This is not funny, Paige," Piper snapped.
"At least we agree on something," Leo mumbled. Piper shot him a dark glare.
"We wouldn't even be in this situation if you would've just told me what's going on," she reminded him, her words dripping with impatience and annoyance.
"So this is all my fault now?" he shouted, "If you had just left the issue alone everything would've been fine, but no, you even had to drag your sister into this and now look what's happened." He gestured to where Phoebe lay on the couch.
"You're blaming me for what happened to Phoebe?" Piper screeched, "I couldn't have helped that."
Feeling forgotten, Paige slipped out of the kitchen unnoticed. The raging voices continued behind her as she walked to the couch and knelt beside Phoebe with the water.
"Here you go Phebes," she held out the glass, "Do you need anything else?"
Phoebe took a big wet drink before answering. "Um, yeah, could you help me sit up?" she asked, a bit embarrassed that she couldn't accomplish the task on her own.
"Sure sweetie," Paige smiled.
With her little sister's help, Phoebe managed to wrench her sore stiff body into a sitting position. She wobbled a moment, and blinked back fuzzy spots in front of her eyes. Her head was pounding and she still felt a little dizzy. Phoebe messaged her right temple with her hand; her eyes started to drift close. "I must have been hurt badly," she mumbled quietly, more to herself than to her sister.
Paige took in her sister's appearance with a look of concern. She seemed so frail and tiny sitting there. Her brown eyes had been glazed over with exhaustion, and dark bags hung under them. Even in the growing twilight, she could see her sister's face was stanch white as though all of the blood had been scared out of her veins. Under the heavy weight of a red afghan, her posture was slumped and sullen. The hunched body was barely supporting itself, and Phoebe seemed to be sinking lower and lower; a wax figure melting in the sun with her fake glassy stare and fragile, porcelain, bloodless skin. Putting an arm around her waist, Paige tried to keep Phoebe up. With her other hand, she brushed back a few disheveled strands of her hair. The locks were damp with sweat. She was also missing an earring, Paige noticed. Who ever did this had blasted the life right out of her. Demon fighting often left them with an adrenaline rush, but Phoebe just looked dead to the world. "Maybe you should go lie down in your room," Paige suggested.
Phoebe shook her head and her eyes fluttered back open. "I'll be fine," she asserted. And she did look a little better; as though she were bringing herself back from an inner world of dark reverie.
"Who did this?" Paige asked quietly, "was it the demon you saw in your premonition?"
Phoebe nodded, "did you find anything about him in the Book of Shadows?"
"A little," Paige pulled the book closer to them from its perch on the table. "Is that the symbol you saw?" She pointed to a complex, slithery, and vine-like scrawl. It looked like the embodiment of chaos itself. The design's shape was unrecognizable; it had no structure or order, and, most strikingly, it had no balance. Everything it the magical world, good or evil, has balance. The strong magical thread that ran through the sisters felt off tilt just by looking at the odd symbol. Its foreignness spoke to them hauntingly; its words vibrated through their being.
"That's it," Phoebe nodded, "the guy had it branded on his arm or something."
"That's not all I found-"
"Wait," Phoebe interrupted, "where's Piper?"
Paige opened her mouth to answer when she realized that there were no more yelling voices coming from the kitchen. Everything was quiet. She wasn't quite sure what to make of that.
"Piper? Leo?" she called out cautiously to the kitchen. No answer. Paige sighed and hoped they hadn't killed each other.
"Those two still fighting?" Phoebe ventured a guess.
"Oh, yeah," Paige nodded, and called out to the kitchen again. After a few seconds of silence, she went to investigate.
She found Piper and Leo standing there, both stone silent, and giving each other gloomy stares. The one arm they now shared dangled uselessly and almost comically between them. Piper's one free hand rested firmly on her hip. Neither looked ready or willing to budge. Paige sure hoped her niece knew what she was doing. Being an only child for most of her life, Paige couldn't think of anyone, even out of those she loved, that she would want to be literally attached to of a long period of time.
Clearing her throat, Paige prepared to sound as forceful as possible. "I don't know what's going on between you two, but we have a demon situation that needs our full attention." She let those words sink in, and then continued, "So, if you two are finished acting like three year olds, Phoebe and I need you in the den."
Weather it was Paige's tone or the mention of demons, something got through the stony figures. They mumbled their compliance and headed into the den with Paige. Piper looked almost relieved to have diversion in front of her, something to take her mind off her marital troubles. Everyone solves problems in their own way; Piper choose to kick demon ass. The eldest Halliwel found a certain solace in demon hunting that the other two couldn't understand. Paige suspected that even her husband, the peacekeeping whitelighter, didn't fully grasp that part of his wife's psyche.
When Piper and Leo walked onto the den, Phoebe became fully animated for the first time since Leo had brought her home. She burst out laughing at the odd sight of the literally attached couple. They glared at her but she didn't take the hint and kept on laughing.
"What.happened?" she managed to choke out in between chuckles.
"Our niece decided to help Piper and Leo work out their marital discord," Paige answered, merriment and laughter sparkling in her eyes. She tried to keep her composure, but her red lips twitched up into a smile despite her best efforts.
"You said something about a demon?" Piper inquired, cold and business like.
Immediately, Paige's expression turned neutral again, and she looked down at the Book of Shadows. "The demon that attacked Phoebe had this symbol of his arm," she pointed to the open page.
Leo crinkled his brow as he and Piper peered down at the book, "I've never seen that before," he remarked.
"No one has for about five hundred years," Paige informed them, "this symbol is associated with a demon named Shiva. He was last seen around the end of the Middle Ages."
"Okay, yeah, whatever," Piper waved her hand dismissively, "so, how do we vanquish him?"
"It doesn't say," Paige sighed, "evidently, no one has ever seen him and lived, let alone been able to vanquish him."
Phoebe suddenly tensed up. "Do you think he'll come back after me?" she asked, "I did see him after all."
Paige shook her head, "I don't think who you saw was Shiva."
"What do you mean?" Piper asked, "Who else besides Shiva would have that symbol?"
Paige pointed to the passage in the book as she talked, "It says here that Shiva is very powerful, and that he often lends some of his powers to other demons in exchange for favors. If the demon does as Shiva asks then the demon keeps the powers."
"So, then the guy who attacked me was one of Shiva's foot soldiers?" Phoebe asked.
"Most likely," Paige nodded.
"Question," Piper interjected, "how does this help us get rid of him? And where has he been for the last few hundred years?"
"I don't know. On both accounts," Paige shrugged, then turned towards Leo, "Do you think you could check with the Elders or would they mind you dropping by in your.um.current state?" she asked barely concealing a snicker.
"No other beings besides whitelighters are supposed to enter the Elder's domain," he told her seriously, "they wouldn't like me dragging Piper up there under any circumstances." He'd said the word "dragging" as though he were referring to a great cumbersome burden. Piper scowled at him.
"Well then, I guess you two need to work things out if you want any chance of breaking the spell," Phoebe advised them.
* * *
The darklighter stepped into the dark musty warehouse cautiously, and a little bit afraid. His new powers weren't completely drained, but he didn't have enough left to complete Shiva's task. He needed more. Inspecting the warehouse's inky black corners, he looked for the powerful demon. He wasn't quite sure where to find Shiva. Shiva always managed to find him.
"What are you doing here?" a soft, raspy, and slithery voice asked from behind him. "Did you do as I asked?"
The darklighter didn't turn around; he knew all he would find was darkness. "No, I need more powers and a little more time," he demanded boldly.
A low rattling hiss sounded from the shadows. The intimidating rumble grew louder and assaulted him from all sides. The demon felt like a human might feel in the rain forest. Completely overwhelmed both with ones own inferiority and the supremacy and cruelty of Mother Nature. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck. A smoldering white light flashed behind his eyes, and fried the delicate flesh of his cornea. He clawed as his face and eyes trying to dig out the source of the pain. Thick crimson rivets flowed down his face. He was crying blood, and screaming like a wild animal. The horrendous sound suddenly stopped when the demon exploded. All that was left, a cocoon of ash, clung to thin air in the shape of a body before dropping unceremoniously to the ground.
Shiva regarded the pile of ash stoically; he could not take pleasure in the kill, nor could he become enraged with the demon's incompetence. No, this plan needed patience and careful methodical thought.
He looked up as another darklighter emerged from the shadows. This one was promising.
"Now you know what I'm capable of," Shiva hissed at the new darklighter, "do not fail me."
The darklighter made a slight bow, "I will not master."
"Very well," Shiva reached out a clawed-scaly hand and touched the demon's left arm. The sizzling of burning flesh was heard, but the demon did not flinch. Ribbons of smoke curled away from his reddening skin and twisted around Shiva's hand like snakes. The darklighter's arm became nothing more that a painful throb, but his thirst for power overcame the agony. Biting his lip with anticipation, he waited, on the verge of impatience, for the transformation to be complete.
When Shiva, at last, removed his hand, the odd mark was branded on the demon. The slayer of whitelighters smiled as the power surged through him. He felt every nerve tingle with a bombardment of senses. Senses that he hadn't felt before. Everything around him was suddenly new and very large, almost overwhelming.
Stretching out his left hand, he found it had been twisted into a tight deformed fist by the pain that still gnawed at his nerves. Pulsating blue veins spider-webbed across the hand, and tiny white blisters had bubbled to the surface as though he were literally bursting with powerful energy. Slowly, he forced his fingers open. The muscles straining with this effort felt like they were tearing away from the bone. His hand was on fire, and seemed like it would explode from the inside out. He concentrated on the pain, and Shiva watched. This was a test and he knew it.
The stinging ache was unique and exotic as though it were caused by hungry little fire ants crawling underneath the skin. He imagined the grainy feeling of those tiny bodies moving and biting within his flesh. His nose flared and he grunted with the effort. Finally, the five digits extended to their full length. The pain dulled and disappeared.
The darklighter pooled his new energies and formed a glowing ball that hovered above his palm. He sent the orb zipping across the dark warehouse. It cut through the blackness with a haunting illumination, and exploded on the far wall, creating a large hole.
"This will do very nicely," he smiled again and turned back to Shiva, "you shall get what you want," he promised. "Those witches won't stand in my way."
TBC. (If you want to know what happens next, please send reviews!)