[A/N, Sorry for the delay updating! I'm also sorry that this is the shortest chapter... and the one I consider the worst... part of the reason for the delay... I wanted to make it as good as possible before I posted... Please review it honestly!]

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Chapter Six

What Lies Beneath

The Frank Williams Memorial Cemetery, like any other cemetery, looked especially creepy at night. Aside from a stray dog that was wandering aimlessly among the tombstones, the graveyard appeared empty.

Now the dog wasn't looking for anything in particular, just patrolling what it considered it's turf. It sniffed here, and sniffed there, checking to see if any other animal had been through the area. At one tombstone it stopped, and began sniffing the ground curiously.

This particular tombstone was fairly old, never visited, and slightly shaded from the moonlight by a young oak tree. The inscription on the stone was for a man whom had died forty years earlier. Six feet below the tombstone, was a coffin. The coffin had not aged well during its years underground, and seemed on the verge of collapsing. Through the cracks and holes in the coffin a large amount of dirt had made its way in; in fact there were several buckets worth of dirt within the coffin. However dirt, the occasional bug, and the forty year old remains of the coffin's occupant were not the only thing six feet under. The coffin had a new occupant, an occupant that had arrived only there minutes before. An occupant that was slowly regaining consciousness.

Vague thoughts wandered across her mind. Screaming at her parents... riding her bike... a smoke cloud... going to bed... going to bed... going to bed... no other memory came after going to bed... She closed her eyes tighter, her head was killing her, that car accident must have done more damage to her than the paramedics thought.

How long have I been asleep? She wondered. She didn't really care enough to roll over and check her alarm clock. Her mother would wake her up when she had to get up. She took a deep breath to relax herself. However, instead of relaxing, she choked on the stale, dusty air and started coughing. She forced her eyes open, and quickly realized she wasn't in her bedroom. Wherever she was, it was small, faintly lit, and the ceiling was no more than six inches from her face. Panicked, she looked around. To her right was the cracked and rotted wall of the coffin, not that she knew it was a coffin. She looked to her left. She saw the source of the light, a small grayish cloud that was faintly glowing, and seemed to have enveloped her left arm. However, when she screamed it wasn't because she recognized the grayish cloud as whatever had knocked her off her bike. No, she screamed because the skeletal remains of the coffin's first occupant were lying next to her. The second she made eye-contact, atleast as much as one can make with a skeleton, she realized exactly where she was.

It sufficed to say Kayla Couter was in a full panic. Her heart was racing, and she could barely breath. In the beginning she could barely breath because of her panic, but now that she had hyperventilated for a full thirty seconds, the already thin air was getting thinner. Aside from simply being encased in a coffin with its former occupant, and aside from being six feet underground, one of the things adding to her panic was the gray cloud surrounding her left arm. Had the cloud simply remained encased around her arm she might have been able to calm down. In fact, she was starting to accept the fact that she couldn't move her hand at all, most likely because of the cloud creature. Solid clouds and paralyzing clouds, were all things Kayla could accept under the circumstances. However, a talking cloud was too much.

If the skeleton in the grave had ears, it would have heard nothing more than some screeching noises resembling fingernails on a chalk board. However, to Kayla Couter, it sounded like a deep, hissing voice.

"Sssslow your breeeathing..." It hissed, speaking directly into her mind.

Chances are its tone was meant to be calming and reassuring. However, most people don't respond well to a talking rains cloud; Kayla was no exception. She let out a piercing scream, but quickly silenced herself with a sharp intake of breath when a series of cracks formed on the roof of the coffin and a small amount of dirt trickled through it.

"Sssslow your breeeathing..." It repeated, then added, "Or you will kill youuuurssssself and be forgotteeeeen...."

"Slow your breathing" no long really applied, Kayla was holding her breath and staring at the low ceiling, fearing it would collapse in on her any second.

"What are you?" She asked softly, fearing to speak any louder.

"I am a Weeeeeeaaaavvaaaabriiiiiiiissssssssaaaaaaaa" It hissed, as if she was suppose to know that that was.

Slowly it began creeping up her arm.

Kayla quickly flew into panic again as she lost all feeling in her arm as the creature moved up it.

"Slow your breathing!" It commanded, and flew away from her arm and straight into her chest.

Kayla's reaction was equivalent to a person who just got punched in the stomach. However, in Kayla's situation, suddenly lurching into the fetal position meant cracking her head on the roof of the coffin. She would have liked to have grabbed her head in pain, or perhaps protected her face from stream of dirt that was now falling on her left cheek right below her eye; however, she couldn't move her arms, or for that matter any other part of her body.

"Stop your resisting," it hissed in her mind.

It was a rather useless order. She couldn't move. She could barely breath. She had a disturbing mental image of a gray cloud inside her chest, crushing her lungs (what she didn't know was how accurate that mental image really was).

"Fighting will do you no good," it spoke firmly and clearly in her mind.

Kayla attempted to reply to the creature, but found that she couldn't speak. Her face was as numb as the rest of her body. Still panicked she thought, "How the hell am I going to get out of here?!"

"You will not leave her with out my assistance," it responded to her thought.

Had she been able to, her half closed eyes would have bugged out. Had it just spoke in her head?!

"Yes."

"How did we get here?" She thought at it.

"You brought us here."

Funny... She didn't remember going off somewhere to get herself buried alive...

"You were not buried," demons rarely caught sarcasm, this one was no exception.

"Then how did we get here?" She asked it again, hoping to get a real answer.

"You brought us here." This was going no where fast. "You must stop fighting me."

"What?"

"You must stop fighting me if you want to avenge the murder of your parents."

Again her eyes would have shot out of her head.

"The murder?! What?! What happen!?"

Suddenly images flashed through her mind. Her parents brutally mutilated bodies strewn across the floor. The three women who had been at the car accident. One of the women flicking her hands and suddenly a vase blowing up.

But why would anyone want to murder her parents? Why would those three women murder them? They had been so helpful after the accident... What was going on here? Did she just blow up that vase?... How?? How did she wake up to find herself six feet underground???

"They are demons," the creature said reassuringly. "They are trying to kill you."

Though it sounded sincere, Kayla wasn't convinced. Something in the back of her mind was telling her it was lying. The same sort of something that tells you to run when a stranger is offering you candy, or that tells you maybe you shouldn't put all your weight on that one tree branch. Fortunately the creature couldn't read the back of her mind, and didn't detect the hesitation.

"How did we get here?" Kayla thought at it.

"I used your power to bring us here. We are safe here."

"My power?"

The demon remained silent for a moment. "One of the demons gave you some of his powers. An accident I'm sure. He would never help the human he is trying to kill." Though the demon didn't know it, it was only partially lying in this statement. Of course Leo wasn't trying to kill Kayla (not that Kayla knew that). However, he did accidentally give Kayla some powers. Through some combination of the demon's leaching presence, and Leo's attempt to only half-heal, Kayla had somehow absorbed some slight form of whitelighter powers.

Of course Kayla didn't know that. Nor did the demon know that for a fact. It had assumed that by luck it had possessed a half-white lighter. However when the girl was confused by the mention of her power...

"What power did it give me?" She thought, even though she had a good idea what that power was.

"The power of orbing... The moving from one place to another instantly."

"How do I do that?" She wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.

"You can't without my help." Kayla could almost feel it laughing as it spoke.

"Will you help me?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

"You must stop resisting my presence first... And then help me destroy the Charmed ones..."

"Who?"

"The Char-the ones who... murdered... your parents."

It was lying. She knew it. Maybe she could agree to help it long enough to get out of the coffin...

"I will not be tricked." It hissed.

Kayla gasped as the great weight was suddenly lifted off her chest. The gray cloud moved over face and hovered there a moment.

"If you choossssse death I can not helllllp you..." It hissed, and then moved straight through the roof of the coffin.

"Hey! How do I get out of her?!" She shrieked angrily at the cloud, and without thinking smacked the roof of the coffin with her hand.

The many years of rot which had already damaged the coffin, and the damage it had received in the last few minutes were too much for the old coffin.

Kayla scream was stifled as the roof of the coffin split virtually in half, and dirt began pouring into the small space. All thoughts in her mind, whether they were subconscious disbelief of the cloud, or conscious thoughts of using and losing the cloud, all of them were replaced with one thing: Fear. That was simply the perfect environment for a Phoebus Leach.

Dirt wasn't the only thing which promptly fell from the roof. The leach shot down to its unsuspecting victim, and instantly gained possession of her body and power.

The dirt poured in faster as the space which had been occupied by a living body seconds before, was suddenly vacated in a splash of blue light.

On the surface the stray dog, which had been sniffing the grave, gave a sharp "yip!" and jumped back in surprise as the ground suddenly sank down sharply. The dog cautiously approached the grave and sniffed it tentatively. Whatever had been causing what it smelled had mysteriously vanished, so the dog trotted carelessly away.

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[A/N, -Sigh- I honestly feel this is the worse chapter of the fanfic... But I swear they get really good after this!

Review Replies:

Prue21: Well this isn't the demon that kills Piper, but now you do know how it can Orb ;)

Rusty: Rusty... If you're life depended on me updating you would have flat lined looooooong ago... lol

charmed lover: Heh, when I was editing this chapter, I discovered two chapters later that I had just been reading my own fic... Kinda sad on my part I guess, lol.

Marysmary: Thanks for the review!

Thanks guys! More reviews please!!!]