Chapter Two
Road Rage
While inside the Halliwell house there was a demon running amuck, outside was a peaceful Sunday morning scene. The mild San Francisco weather had made it a beautiful day. People were walking their dogs, kids were playing outside, people were out driving with their convertible tops down, and a particular Halliwell neighbor was out riding her bike.
The teenaged girl pedaled along rather aimlessly, not fully paying attention to where she was going, but not really oblivious of her surroundings. She had been zigzagging back and forth across the road, but, upon spotting an on coming red car, began gradually moving farther to the right side of the road.
A muted crashing noise from the house to her right suddenly drew her attention. What was that? Sounded a bit loud to be a dish being broken... She stopped her peddling and stared at the house as her bike slowly cruised by the house. What happened next happened too fast for her brain to fully register. A black cloud suddenly appeared in front of the house, almost as if it had passed straight through the front door. The cloud shot through the air as if it had been forced into motion by some sort of explosion. Unfortunately for the girl on the bike, but fortunately for the cloud, it was on a direct collision course with her.
The driver of the car that the girl had spotted moments before was oblivious to the appearance of any such dark cloud, and instead was busily looking under the seat for his dropped cell phone. Due to his obliviousness of the road in front of his own car, he had no more than a split second to react to the sudden swerving of the girl on the bicycle. A split second is simply not enough.
In truth the girl hadn't intentionally, or even accidentally, swerved in front of the car, but when the cloud struck her it didn't pass through her like it had through the door, and instead seemed to be absorbed into her. The sudden force from the cloud knocked the girl and bicycle into the on coming traffic.
In a sense it was fortunate that when the cloud had struck her it had partially knocked her off the bike. When the car struck the bike she was bucked off the completely, and thrown over the entire car, bouncing off the car's trunk, and then landing painfully on the ground. Her bike, however, became twisted and mangled under the car's front right tire. The chain snapped, the gear spokes ripped into the car tire, and the bike quickly no longer looked like one.
The driver's delayed reaction to the sudden crash, and the sudden blow out of his car's tire caused him to slam on the breaks and swerve violently into a mail box on the curb.
"What on earth," Piper said to no one in particular as she peered out the front window. "Oh, god! Leo!"
"Piper? What is it?" Leo said and he walked up to the window and looked out for himself. "Oh..." He frowned slightly.
"Heal! Go now!" Piper began shoving him towards the door, and Phoebe and Paige both curiously replace Leo and Piper at the window.
"What?" Piper demanded when she realize Leo wasn't exactly dashing out the door to the rescue, and was instead look rather hesitant.
"This is a common occurrence," he said slowly, looking at Piper cautiously. "Unless we have some reason to believe there is something evil I really shouldn't be-"
Piper lividly interrupted, "Leo are you telling me there is a kid outside who just got hit by a car and you aren't willing to do-!"
"Wait," this time Phoebe interrupted them. "My premonition, I saw this in my premonition, so we've got to do something!" Phoebe wasn't entirely sure that followed, but she did agree with Piper, and with or without Leo she was going to go out there and beat some sense into the driver who was still sitting in his car looking stunned.
Leo hesitated for another second, but the three, identical, crossed looks on the sister's faces was rather intimidating.
"Alright!" he said, giving in finally. "But you two have to keep the driver distracted. Piper take Wyatt," he added almost as an after thought.
"Sounds good," Phoebe said throwing the door open and rushing out.
As Phoebe and Paige went to distract the driver, Piper and Leo jogged over to the motionless rider, whom they now saw to be teenaged girl, no older than sixteen years old.
"Broken leg... concussion..." Leo muttered to himself, kneeling next to the girl. "She's not breathing either..." He held his hands a few inches above her chest and was prepared to begin healing her when Piper grabbed his arm.
"Only heal things below the surface."
"What?" He demanded, well aware that the girls heart beat was slowing down and she'd be clinically dead in mere moments.
"No one gets hit by a car without getting scratched, heal things below the surface, leave the cuts and bruises," Piper indicated the ripped t-shirt sleeve and the nasty scratch underneath it.
"Alright," Leo said, sounding flustered, he'd never half healed before, that almost seemed sacrilegious.
Meanwhile, Paige and Phoebe were doing an excellent job distracting the driver. They had succeeded in getting him out of his car, and out of ear shot of Piper and Leo.
"Okay now interlace your fingers behind your head, and flap your arms like a bird," Phoebe said earnestly while demonstrating. She and Paige had managed to convince the man that he may have broken his neck and they had to make sure he hadn't.
"Oh I think I felt something pop," Paige insisted, her hands firmly on his shoulders, acting as the last resort if he tried to turn around.
"Okay, point your arms straight up," Phoebe demonstrated. "And wiggle your fingers."
Paige glanced behind her momentarily when she heard a soft groan, but then quickly focused on the driver again when she easily saw the bright gold glow from Leo's hands.
"What's taking so long?" Piper whispered curiously.
"Trying to heal only under the surface is harder than it seems," he whispered back.
The girl gave an groan as her leg magically snapped back into place and healed seamlessly.
"I'm going to try to wake her up now," Leo whispered, slowly sliding his hand under her helmeted head. It would be easier to keep his hand above her head, but he couldn't risk her opening her eyes to a bright gold light.
"Did you call 911?" The driver asked Phoebe and Paige, his voice clearly showing he was recovering from his shock of hitting the biker, and starting to suspect crossing his arms and head banging was not an actual test to see if someone had broken their neck.
"Oh, um, well..." Phoebe stuttered for a moment, but then seeing Piper flash her a thumbs up she quickly finished her thought. Phoebe quickly pulled out her cell phone, "I'll do that right now!"
Piper had signaled her sister because the girl had opened her eyes.
"What happened?" She asked, sounding groggy while attempting, and failing, to sit up.
"Hey sweetie," Piper said, immediately assuming the maternal role. "You had a little accident with your bike."
The girl stared up at them confused. Who were these two people, well three if you counted the baby, hovering over her? What had happened? She turned her head slowly and saw the car with its front wheel up on the street curb, a smashed mail box on the neighbors lawn, and next to the broken mail box of piece of metal that look painted the familiar blue color of her bike. She had been riding down the street and... the memory flashed through her mind, a dark cloud had knocked her over... No... that was ridiculous...
"I must have lost control of my bike..." She muttered, trying to sit up again, but promptly became dizzy and slumped back down, her helmet bouncing softly on the blacktop.
"Ambulance is on its way!" Phoebe shouted over to Piper and Leo. She saw the girl was conscious, though still laying down, Leo wouldn't try to heal her anymore. "Well I don't think you broke your neck," she said, returning her attention to the driver who immediately turned around to look at the bicyclist.
Paige was still standing in his way, so he side stepped to his right, only to have Paige quickly follow the motion to block his view. He went to his left, and Paige followed, wondering why had Phoebe stop conning him. Seeing Phoebe's frantic waving, she realized Leo must have stopped doing anything worth hidng.
"Heh heh... Sorry..." Paige muttered and stepped out of the way.
"You okay kid?" The driver asked, sounding as if it was more of a formality to ask, than a sincere question.
"I think I'm okay," the girl mumbled. "My head hurts a lo-"
"So why the hell weren't you watching where you were going!" Immediately the driver's true intentions were obvious. "You know how much damage your bike probably did to the underside of my car! That car is worth more than you and your bike, that's for sure!" He gestured violently at the ruined tire and chipped paint.
"Hey! Stop right there mister!" Piper snapped and got in the man's face. Piper didn't need to be facing down a demon to look intimidating. Even with Wyatt squirming in her arms, no mere mortal was going to easily ignore the furious blaze in her eyes. "I don't know whose fault this was, but I'm pretty sure that hunk of junk you call a car had plenty more damage than the few scratches one little bike caused!" Though Piper mentally admitted the damage looked pretty bad, she was too angry to admit that verbally.
The man made a face as if he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. "Well I still want her insuran-" He was cut off by the loud sound of approaching sirens.
The girl, turning bright red and looking thoroughly embarrassed, tried to jump to her feet before the ambulance driver could see her laying on the ground. Instead of standing in a dignified, but bruised, manner, she immediately lost her balance and was only saved by Leo's quick movement to catch her.
"Thanks..." she muttered, turning, if possibly, redder.
The ambulance came to a halt in front of the scene of the accident, and was quickly followed by two police cars and, even though there wasn't one to put out, a fire engine. The ambulance team came forward and began examining the driver and the girl, and two police officers came forward to take statements. Wyatt, slightly to Piper's relief, decided he didn't like sirens and burst out crying, so Piper managed to excuse herself and went back into the house.
Piper closed the door and leaned against it, unconsciously bouncing an already calm Wyatt up and down as she surveyed the mess left over from the demon hunt. A flower vase lay smashed on the floor surrounded by the singed remains of its floral contents, there were atleast two burn marks on the rug, and a large amount of ash directly in front of Piper where the demon had met its untimely demise.
"How about we go find out what Mr. Demon was?" she said to a content Wyatt who was now actively chewing on his shirt sleeve.
Piper walked past a burn mark on the wall, and up the stairs to the attic of the old family house. The Book of Shadows sat on its usual pedestal in the middle of the room, and, as usual, Piper felt a strange surge or reassurance every time she saw it laying there, knowing that a long line of Halliwells had added so much knowledge to the book. Surely one of them had encountered that thing before. Right?
First she sat Wyatt down in his play pen, where he began distract himself with a stuffed animal to bite on, then she turned to the book.
Piper had flipped through atleast two-hundred pages of demons, looking for something that looked even remotely like the creature they had encountered that morning, before her sisters and Leo entered the attic.
"Hey, any luck?" Paige said promptly looking over her sister's shoulder.
"Not a bit..." She bit her lip and turned a couple more pages. "How's the kid?" she asked as if suddenly remembering.
Phoebe turned away from Wyatt, who she had been making faces at, and looked at Piper. "Well it turns out she just lived up the street, family just moved in so I guess that's why we didn't recognize her. Paramedics didn't find anything wrong with her, of course," she gave an almost arrogant smile and looked at Leo who didn't seem to find anything he did out of the ordinary. "So she gave the driver her phone number and address, and then the ambulance took her to the hospital. Her parents are going to have to sign some paperwork to get her out." Phoebe concluded with a shrug and turned back to Wyatt.
"What's up?" Piper asked.
"Hmm?" Phoebe continued looking at Wyatt and no one else.
"Come on, I don't need to be empathic to know you are hiding something, what's else?" Piper closed the book and walked over to her sister, with Paige quickly following.
Phoebe hesitated for a moment before finally turning and facing her sisters.
"I felt something demonic," she said bluntly.
"Yeah well I'm pretty sure we all did earlier," Paige replied with unnecessary sarcasm.
"No mean outside, at the accident..." she bit her lip.
Piper's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Another demon? Within minutes of the first one?
"Where was it coming from?" Paige asked.
"I'm not entirely sure... it felt scattered... confused... angry... but also scared..." she shook her head slowly, trying to sort out the feelings.
"Well I'm not so sure I'd be surprised if that asshol-"
"Hey! Baby ears!" Piper interrupted suddenly and gestured at Wyatt.
Paige cringed, "sorry... Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if that driver had a little bit of demon in him."
"Maybe..." Phoebe said slowly. "But that doesn't explain why it felt so scattered..."
"Could it have just been some left over demon feelings from Piper's vanquish?" Leo asked, his arms crossed and his face showing a great deal of concern.
Phoebe started to nod, but then started shaking her head instead. "I don't think so... It was something... else..."