Chapter Five

Mixed Emotions

"So now what?" Phoebe asked, walking through the front door.

Piper followed her silently into the house. She put her keys down, and glanced into the other room. Wyatt's play crib, of course, sat empty on the floor. Piper took some comfort in knowing he was safe, atleast for now.

"They're still down there," Paige said from the front porch, looking down the street at the police surrounded house.

"Well gawking isn't going to help," Piper said firmly, collecting her thoughts. "Lets check the book again."

"But we have! Three times!" Paige said, exasperated, as she came inside and closed the door behind her.

"Do you have a better idea? I'm fresh out," Phoebe crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.

"Well... no," Paige admitted. "To the book!"

The three were half way up the stairs when Piper suddenly realized something.

"Wait! I know someone who might know what is going on!"

Before Phoebe or Paige could ask who, Piper shouted.

"Chris!"

Within a second he orbed in and immediately spoke.

"Mom I hope this is very important because I'm-"

"It is important Chris," she cut in, "What was the demon you mentioned earlier?"

Chris's eyes widened. "I thought you vanquished it?"

"Yeah well, so did I," Piper crossed her arms and stared at Chris impatiently.

"Was it a Phoebus Leach?" Chris asked, his eyes becoming, if possibly, wider.

"A what?" Was the synchronized reply of the sisters.

"Phoebus Leach demon," he repeated. "It has two forms. One looks like a dense smoke cloud, semi transparent, but solid to the touch."

Piper shook her head, "That's not what we vanquished."

"Its other form is-" he was cut off by a shrill growl from ceiling.

All four of them looked up at the demon clinging to the ceiling; leering at them, drooling, and looking altogether menacing.

Chris finished his last thought, "that!" Chris immediately switch to whitelighter mode, "Quick! You're going to need the power of three to vanqui-" again he was cut off by the creature.

It gave a shrill cry and then sprang straight off the ceiling and flew/fell towards Phoebe and Paige.

"Attic!" Phoebe shouted, grabbing Paige's arm.

"Wait!" Chris shouted, still focused on the fact that they needed the power of three.

The creature, having missed its prey, turned it's attention towards Piper and Chris.

Piper jumped back in surprise as the creature moved towards her, and promptly fell backwards off the stairs. Chris caught her before she hit the ground, and orbed before the mid-air lunging creature even got close to them.

"Any ideas?" Phoebe asked as Piper and Chris appeared (Chris promptly pushed Piper into the full upright position).

"Take some of these," Paige said, handing her sisters vanquishing potions she had grabbed off a shelf.

"How do we know if these'll work?" Phoebe asked frantically.

"They won't! It takes the power of three to vanquish it!" Chris insisted.

However, before the sisters could think of a power of three spell, the creature had already appeared at the side of the doorway, scampering along the wall; It was looking ready to kill.

Paige and Phoebe threw their vanquishing potions at the creature, but it easily dodged them, and the potions smashed uselessly on the ground.

"Um... Piper blast it!" Phoebe said, out of weapons and ideas.

Piper flicked her fingers at it, but that didn't do any good. Though her vanquish was right on target, and the creatures should have easily been blown to pieces, it usually proves quite difficult to blow something up when that something orbs.

The sisters' mouths fell open in shock, and Chris took a step back in surprise.

"It orbed!" Phoebe said in an unnaturally high voice. "Evil things don't orb!"

"Where'd it go?" Paige asked, her voice not much calmer than Phoebe's.

The smashing sound gave away the creatures location. The demon didn't seem to know you shouldn't come out of an orb five feet in the air, and three of those five feet shouldn't be over a small table. Gravity had promptly taken over, and caused the demon to fall, smashing into the table.

The three charmed ones and their white lighter spun around at the sound of the crash. The creature stumble around on the ground for a moment before it regained it's balance.

"Gotcha," Piper said triumphantly.

"No!" Phoebe said suddenly, knocking Piper's hands to the side as she prepared to blow the creature up. Piper's shot went wide, and shattered a mirror on the wall instead of hitting the creature.

"What are you doing?!" Chris demanded. "Vanquish it! Now!"

Piper was beyond confused. Her sister had said moments before to "blast it" now she had just interfered with a clean shot.

"What?" Piper asked, closing her raised hands and staring at her sister in surprise, virtually ignoring the demon.

Phoebe was staring intently at the demon. "The confusion, the scattered feelings..." She said slowly.

"Just blow it up!" Chris ordered.

Piper and Paige, ignoring Chris, exchanged a confused look behind Phoebe's head, and then the two of them looked back at the demon. They were both surprised to see the creature didn't look nearly as menacing as it had seconds before. It was crouched on the ground, it kept repeating the same stumbling movement. Three tentative, almost forced steps forward, then scampering back a few feet as if something had scared it. The demon went through the same twisted dance three times before Phoebe spoke.

"Its confused... Scared... Angry... But determined to do... something..." Phoebe said taking slow, small steps towards the demon. The demon stopped its scampering as Phoebe approached it. The two made eye contact, and held it for several seconds before the creature let out a piercing shrieking noise and vanished with an orb.

Piper and Paige both clasped their hands over their ears to try to block out the shriek, Chris seemed indifferent to it, and Phoebe brought her hands up to her forehead, and fell to the ground as her knees suddenly buckled beneath her.

While Paige frantically turned her head this way and that, expecting to see the demon orb back in somewhere else in the room, Piper rushed to her sister's side.

"Hey! Hey, you okay?" she asked.

Phoebe didn't respond. She simple sat there on the floor her hands on her forehead, with a wide eyed, almost enlightened, expression on her face.

"Yoo-hoo? Anyone there?" Piper asked, waving a hand in front of her sister's face.

"Ssh!" Phoebe snapped, her expression not changing. "I'm trying to sort it out before it fades too much."

Piper shot Paige, who had finally stopped looking around like an excited monkey, a quizzical look. Paige shrugged her shoulders, and looked equally confused.

"Its not evil..." Phoebe said, slowly coming to her feet. "But it's not quite good either."

Chris, upon hearing this, threw his hands up in the air in disgust and stomped over to the book of shadows, muttering to himself, and pretending the sisters weren't even in the room.

Piper shot Chris a brief dirty look, and then focused her attention on Phoebe again.

"What exactly do you mean?" Paige asked cautiously.

"I was getting two sets of emotions from it, a dominant evil set, and a small good set," she bit her lip, "it felt like the good was fighting for dominance."

"Well if there is any good in that thing, it won't win the fight," Chris spoke from behind the book stand. "I'm surprised you felt anything, most good is destroyed in the host within seconds of possession. Within an hour there isn't any left."

"Chris, what exactly is that thing?" Piper asked.

"Phobius Leach." He said simply.

"Which would be...?" Paige said sarcastically.

"Have a look for yourself," Chris took a step back from the book, and gestured at the page it was opened to.

Curiously, the three sisters gathered around the book.

Unlike most entries in the book, the picture of the demon was rather poor. Usually the demons were portrayed by beautiful, detailed illustrations; this looked like someone smeared their cigarette ashes on the upper half of the page and called it art. The description of the demon, however, more than made up for the shoddy picture.

The Phobius Leach

Born from the spiritual remains of those
who died in moments of great fear or anger.
The Phobius Leach can lay dormant for as
long as a thousand years, slowly growing
in strength and size until it becomes strong
enough to possess a host's body, and
then in turn uses the host to destroy the
greatest source of good the Leach can find.

The Leach targets young, easily frightened
children, and quickly destroys their soul.
Then it slowly breaks down the host's
body into something foul and unnatural.

The Leach requires a power of three spell to destroy.
The host can not be saved.

Phoebe shook her head slowly. "I felt good in it... So that can't be it."

"That is it," Chris said firmly.

"Did you feel any good in the last one?" Piper asked curiously, "Or when you asked me to blow this one up a second ago?"

"No... and no..." Phoebe bit her lip again. "I didn't feel anything other than anger and hate until it... orbed." Phoebe's face lit up, "how did it do that!?"

"Could it have possessed a white lighter?" Paige asked.

"Leo!" Piper shouted. "Have any white lighters gone missing?" She asked the moment he appeared.
"Not that I know of," he said slowly, looking confused.

"Go check."

"Okay..." He orbed out again.

"How does this connect to the family down the street?" Paige asked suddenly.

"Are we sure it does?"

"The dead bodies implied yes."

"I felt that thing yesterday, where was it?"

"Hiding in the trash can?"

Phoebe and Piper both gave Paige a dirty look for the last comment, but before either of them could say anything Leo had returned.

"No white lighters are missing. Now what is going on?"

None of the sisters heard his question, instead they were giving each other flabbergasted looks and thinking the same thoughts. If it wasn't a white lighter, what was it the leach had possessed, and how had it orbed? How were they suppose to vanquish a demon that could easily orb away before they could perform a power of three spell? And what innocent would be killed when they did vanquish it?

"None of this is right..." Chris whispered, staring past the sisters at nothing in particular.

All heads snapped towards Chris.

"Chris...Honey..." Piper said slowly. "What is right?"

Chris was blinking rapidly and slowly moving his mouth, as if trying to sort out his thoughts.

"This isn't what happened... Last time... Something changed history..." He was biting his lip so hard that he managed to draw blood.

"What is happening this time?" Asked Leo, still not aware of what had happened that day or the day before.

"Shush Leo. What did happen last time?" Phoebe gently asked, moving closer to Chris.

Chris blinked suddenly, and jerked his head back, as if snapping out of some sort of trance. "You know I can't tell you anything!" He snapped.

"Well... Actually..." Piper said slowly. "If something changed history, than there is no reason we shouldn't know what happened last time."

"Yeah!" Paige jumped in, "its not like it'll change anything for us to know what could have happened."

Chris slowly digested this suggestion. They were right... If it had changed... What could be the harm? But what if he let something slip...

"Chris, history could've changed for the worse." Piper said, trying from a new angle. "If you don't tell us so we can try to fix it, something horrible might happen."

"Youvanquisheditfourtimeslasttime!" He said in a rush, almost forcing himself to speak.

"Come again?" Paige said lamely.

"Last time, you vanquished the demon four times." Chris received mild looks of surprise. "The first three times you just blew it up, but the third time you actually caught a glimpse of its spectral form, so you know how to vanquish it the fourth time."

"Okay, so we're only up to two right now... So?" Paige said dully.

"You should have vanquished two of them yesterday," Chris said firmly. "And then the third revealing one today."

"So what did you do yesterday that delayed the attack?" Piper asked.

"Me?! I didn't do anything!" Chris said, stepping back defensively.

"You might have done something very minor that caused something bigger to happen, the classic butterfly effect." Leo said sagely. "Now will someone please tell me what is going on!"

- - - - - - - - - -

[A/N, And now for some lovely review replies :D

Charmed Addict: Well, now you know what type of demon it is O.o

Rachael: You make me post too fast!

Prue21: Whacks head Oh crud! You're right! The timeline is screwed up O.o Oh well... lol

Slayer3: Hey Slayer! You're a new reviewer! I don't remember conning you into reading this... welcome to my fic :D

Thanks guys! More reviews please!!!]