A/N: I loved writing this chapter. (I have an obsession with goriness.) Just FYI.
Change Happens
Chapter 33: Live Long Or Die Scrying
Persia Halliwell pushed the gear shift forward, locking it on 'P'. The ignition clicked off as she turned the key from front to back. The Child of Light leaned back into the soft, black leather of the chair and tugged the list from her pocket. She studied the first name: Natasha Lyons. "Thirteen-fifty, Nightengale Drive."
Persia pushed the driver's side door opened, and got out, taking the Porche's keys with her. The car beeped and its lights blinked twice after she activated its alarm. She turned away and darted up the street, rounding the corner onto Nightengale Drive. She hovered under the street sign for a moment, eyeing the numbers on the houses in order to figure out which side the evens were on and which were the odds.
With a quick swerve of her head, she ran across the street the moment the last car had disappeared onto the next street. She mentally noted that few cars were in their driveways, meaning one of two things: they weren't home, or they were in garages. She suspected the former, but wanted to keep a low profile nonetheless. If anyone were to see her or be able to describe her in Natasha's murder, she'd have to take care of them too.
The houses on the street were fairly uniform. Each were two story, and very modern. They all contrasted sharply with the classic San Francisco Victorians. There was a white picket fence around every lawn, a cement walkway down the center of each front yard, exactly three cement steps before one could reach the porch. The first home on the right side of the street was white with dark blue trim, the second was peach with white trim, the third a pale pink with red trim, and finally a mint green house with forest green trim. The pattern continued all the way up the street on the right and in the reverse, all the way down the left.
Thirteen-fifty, Nightengale Drive was the sixth house on the right side of the street. To match the others, it should have been peach and white. In striking contrast, however, it was an electric blue with lime green trim. The small fence was the same flashing green color. The lawn was the brightest of all the lawns, and dotted with children's toys. Unlike the other homes, there was a bright purple porch swing displayed next to the front door, and a small doggy door at the bottom of the main entrance.
Persia pushed through the lime green gate and moved down the cement walkway. It was covered in multi-colored chalk blotches. Pictures of animals, happy faces, a tic-tac-toe board, and even a hopscotch game had been drawn. Carelessly, the electrokinetic shuffled across them, leaving chalky footprints all the way up the walkway. She didn't realize it.
She approached the door cautiously, and leaned her ear against it. From her vantage point, she couldn't hear any noise. The teenager placed her hand to the golden handle and a small bolt of yellow energy coursed between the lock and doorframe. A small spray of wood chips fell to her feet, and a dark black scorch mark remained. The door swung open and Persia moved inside, not even bothering to shut the door behind her.
----
James moved through the force field with ease. Predicting Phoebe's movements, he caught her by the ankle and jerked her backwards, bashing her head into the headboard of the bed. "Work with me, Phoebe." He grabbed a small vial from his breast pocket and waved it at her. "I'm going to win either way."
Phoebe touched the back of her head, feeling a small drop of blood from the bash to her head. Her eyes were bleary, and she couldn't make James out. But as he spoke, she scrambled away from the sound of his voice. When she felt him grab her inner thigh, she screamed and aimed another blind kick.
James watched in perverse pleasure as the kick narrowly missed his head. "You're good even when you in a vulnerable position." He dug his nails into her thigh, and pulled her back to him. At the same time, he bit into the top of the cork on his potion vial and spit it out. In one swift motion, he grabbed the hem of Phoebe's shirt and pulled it up, revealing her bare, toned stomach. He turned the potion, dropping its dark orange contents onto her stomach.
Phoebe gasped. It felt like ice water being dumped onto her body. Goosebumps formed instantaneously. Then, to her horror, she felt all of her legs go numb and immovable. She flailed her arms, only to have James grab them both roughly and smack them back into the bed.
James moved eagerly onto the struggling witch, and pressed his mouth to hers. His eyes disappeared under a dark red glow. He hadn't felt so powerful in roughly seventeen years. He let loose her left arm and slid his hand up her shirt, only to feel her recoil and beat him blindly with the said arm.
As his eyes returned to normal, he planned to follow through with what he'd started, just as he saw a flash of red and black in the corner of the room. He growled. The witch picked himself up from Phoebe, and slid off the bed. "What do you want?" He demanded, addressing the rat demon who now stood in his room.
"We have a problem."
"What problem?"
"The alchemist says he needs to see you."
"I'm in the middle of something," the pyrokinetic growled.
"It can't wait. Unless, of course, you want to take the chance of combusting."
James curled his fist. "Fine." He glanced over at Phoebe, who he realized was just beginning to get her sight back. "We're not through," he promised. He moved quickly to the rat demon, grabbed him by the arm, and disappeared in a burst of red illumination.
----
The pink skin on Phaelinna's small face began to burn a bright red. Her eyes scrunched up and tears leaked from her small, hazel eyes. Her mouth opened as wide as possible, and a glass shattering shriek pierced the air.
Glenn barreled into the room. His eyes swept it quickly, searching for some scary beast of ominous figure. When he found none, he moved more cautiously to the bassinet that his niece was in. "Phae," he cooed. His voice seemed lost under her cries. He proceeded anyway, despite the fact that his ears were ringing with her screams.
"Sweetheart," he breathed. "It's okay, Uncle Glenn's here now." He plucked the pink bundle from the bassinet and held the screaming child close to his chest. "Shh, everything's okay. Uncle Glenn's here." Glenn began to rock her in a soothing motion, but it only seemed to agitate the child.
His mind wandered. He'd already given her a bottle, burped her, he'd changed her less than five minutes ago. So what could possibly be wrong now? He scratched his nose, continuing to rock the screaming babe. Then he blinked, straining his mind for something Prue had told him years earlier. This situation seemed far too much like déjà vu.
----Flashback----
Glenn Belland's eyes were streaked with tiny, bulging red lines. He'd been up for hours now, and nothing was going in his favor. His hair was a mess and his face was creased his lines. Dark circles hung under his eyes. In fact, he'd been so tired that he hadn't even dressed himself properly. He'd missed buttoning about three buttons in the middle of his pajama top.
He groaned, shuffling across the kitchen floor with his tiny daughter in his arms. "Baby," he pleaded, "come on now. Daddy's tired. Can't you be tired too?" He stared at the small bundle in his arms, giving her his best bargaining look. "Please?"
Pearl, barely two weeks old, just howled at her young father. Her entire body was shaking as she screamed at the top of her lungs. The infant's face was a dark scarlet, verging almost on violet, and her little brown eyes were like tiny broken Hoover Dams.
"Glenn?"
Glenn's head bounced up and he shrunk back in embarrassment. "Hi, Prue."
"What's going on?" The eldest witch yawned. Her voice was barely audible over the baby's screams.
"I can't get her to stop crying," Glenn moaned in desperation. "I've been up with her since midnight." He looked at the time on the microwave. "And now it's just about three."
Prue's slippers made a scratchy noise as they moved across the sleek tile of the kitchen floor. "Can I?"
"Be my guest."
Prue slipped her niece from Glenn's arms and began to jiggle the child. Her cries lessened severely. Prue stroked the infant's fine brown hair and grinned. "Aw, feel better baby?"
"How did you do that?" The mortal's jaw dropped in astonishment.
Prue giggled. "Walk with me." She moved out of the kitchen and headed for the stairs. "I think I might be able to teach you something."
Glenn clasped a hand over his mouth and yawned, following his sister-in-law. "Whatever you say."
"This is called the jiggle," Prue explained as they both reached the top of the stairs. "It replicates the warm feeling of still being in the womb." She winked as they continued their track down the hall. "And there's also the wave, but it's better if you just master one first. Do you want to try it?"
Glenn instantly thrust his hands up, creating a barrier between himself and Prue. "No offence, but I don't want to mess with a good thing."
Prue chuckled. "You sound like Piper."
"I thought Piper wanted kids."
"Oh, now she does," Prue agreed. "But before, when she dated this guy named Dan, she wasn't sure if she did." Her blue eyes rolled back in her head. "You should've seen the way she tried to get out of dealing with this little boy we had to protect. Although, just between you and me, I think she had a better time than she let on."
"Ahmm," the mortal yawned.
Prue stopped behind the Book of Shadows. She shifted Pearlinda, who was now down to a soft whimper, to her other arm and narrowed her eyes. The front cover of the Book flew open and the pages began to whistle as they moved via Prue's power.
"Have you ever thought about having kids?"
"Me?" Prue stole another look at her niece. "Once upon a time." Her blue eyes were wistful.
"What changed your mind?"
"Well…" The pages stopped turning, and Prue nodded at the page. "Oh! Here we go." The witch telekinetically lifted the Book up and spun it around in mid air, so that now it was facing Glenn instead of her. "Phoebe, Piper, and I found this last year. It's not much, but I thought it might help."
Glenn rubbed his eyes and peered at the yellowed pages. "'Sometimes a baby just has to cry.' Who wrote that?"
"My mom." Prue lowered the Book back down to the pedestal, and moved back to Glenn. "Ya wanna try now?"
Glenn chewed his lip a moment, and then held out his hands. "Okay." To his surprise, when he copied Prue's technique, his daughter didn't cry. In fact, even her whimpering ceased. He looked back at his sister-in-law. "Thanks."
"No problem."
----Flashback----
"Sometimes a baby just has to cry," he repeated. Glenn began to slowly jiggle his niece, hoping that her crying would lessen or even halt altogether. To his partial relief, it did lessen. But he also found himself wondering why Phae was still behaving the way she was. The jiggle had always worked wonders with Pearl and her cousins. So why not Phae?
"Baby girl," he whispered, "what's wrong? You can tell me. You can tell your good old Uncle Glenn." The mortal changed tactics, attempting the wave. Again, it had little to no effect on the infant. He was just about ready to give into the fact that sometimes a baby just has to cry, when he felt a sharp piercing inside his head. He winced in pain as psychic energy pummeled his mortal mind.
----Premonition----
Dark gray smoke coated the entire room like thick pea soup. It hung there, unmoving and ominous for several seconds. Then it began to shift and spread out, clearing slightly to reveal a shadowy pair of arms waving in the distance. When all of the smoke had leveled off, it revealed the petite form of Persia Halliwell.
Dark blood was spattered across her peachy face. Small tendrils of hair dripped the gooey red liquid. Her clothing was soaked, and a large pool of red flowed at her feet. The electrokinetic witch moved around the red puddle, kneeling next to the woman that she'd murdered.
The young woman's face was completely void of color. Her throat had been sliced open literally from one ear to the other. A small fountain of blood spurted from the center of her neck, adding to the pool next to her. Her eyes were frozen wide in terror, and gray smoke sifted from the gaping hole in her chest. The perimeter of the hole was nothing but black, crusted skin.
Persia took her limp hand, and placed her fingers to the wrist. Satisfied with having found no pulse, she let the arm fall back to the ground. The blood sloshed as the dead hand fell into it, splashing her knees with blood. The Child of Light stood up and reached into her pocket, pulling out a small list. She wiped her finger across her knee, taking some of the blood onto it. Then she made a swift motion across the paper, drawing a bloody line through 'Natasha Lyons'.
----Premonition----
Glenn staggered. His face had gone shock white and he found he wasn't even able to utter sounds. How long have you been seeing this? His wide eyes turned to the infant at hand. He couldn't believe that the child had been forced to view such a gruesome sight. Shaking, he turned and pounded up the stairs.
----
"I've got her!" The scrying crystal dropped from Paige's hand. The whitelighter bounced from her seat with one hand on the side of her hand, and the other blindly reaching for her older sister. "Hurry, before I lose her!"
"Paige!" Glenn jolted into the attic. Sweat glistened on his brow.
"Glenn, we don't have time! Persia-"
"Is about to kill someone!"
"What?"
"Or already has."
"What!" Prue shrieked. "How?"
"I saw one of Phae's premonitions," Glenn gasped. "It was…horrible! There was so much blood…"
"Where?"
"I, uh, I don't know."
"Tell Piper we'll be back soon," Paige said in a rush. She grabbed Prue's hand and dissolved into orbs. Her destination: thirteen-fifty, Nightengale Drive.
"It's okay," the mortal soothed. "Your mom and Aunt Prue are gonna fix things like they always do. That's not gonna happen, sweetheart. I promise." He held his niece close, silently hoping that he was right.
----
The eldest Child of Light stood at the top of the stairs. She'd already searched the first floor of the home and concluded that it was empty. She strode down the hall with confidence. To her delight, the sound of soft humming filled her ears. She was close.
There were three closed doors, and an opened bathroom. Persia leaned close to the first door. Nothing. She moved to the second and leaned her ear close. Again, no sound. She smiled with malice as she moved to the third one. The witch held out her hand and bright yellow sparks flickered on her fingertips.
She thrust out her hand and a zigzagging bolt of neon yellow electricity flew from her fingertips. A shower of wooden splinters rained down on her as the door disintegrated. Persia cocked her head at the sight of a young blonde woman, standing protectively in front of two small children, neither one older than five.
"Get out of my house!"
The teenager rolled her eyes. "I've got a job to do." She threw out her hand, grazing the woman's right leg with a stream of yellow electricity. "If you'd just hold still-" Her hair flailed around her face. She found herself sailing through the air, smashing into the wall of the hallway.
"Oh-okay, the hard way," the teen snarled. She curled a fist and pounded it into the floor. The floor burst to life as small yellow sparks jumped across the carpet fibers. They zigzagged their way from her fist to that of her intended victim, literally sending her flying off her feet.
"Leave my mommy alone!" The little girl stomped her foot. The house seemed to rattle, almost like an earthquake. She held out her hand and a blast of sand particles went flying at Persia.
"Agh!" The teen threw her hands in front of her face, shielding it from shower of prickling sand. Her hair began to pull from her head as static electricity exploded from her body. Jagged electric strikes tore from every orifice of her skin. The room and hallway became blinded in an electric yellow flash.
At the end of the hallway, a few blue orbs descended from the ceiling, swirling and forming into the outlines of two women. When the glowing lights disappeared, Prue and Paige stood in their place.
"Oh, Paige!" Prue grabbed her little sister by the shoulders and swung her around, covering Paige's body with her own. Then their forms began to grow fuzzy as Prue activated her power to phase, just in time for the yellow electric beam to pass through them.
The sound of explosions rocketed her ears and when she looked up again, everything around her was covered in charred black. Prue pulled back, turning them both solid again. "Are you okay?"
"Fine, thanks to you." Paige placed her hand to her forehead, squinting down the hallway. She could see her niece rising to her feet. "Oh no you don't!" The Charmed One's hand flew out instinctively. To her surprise, the floor under Persia began to glow a yellow color. "Uh, Prue…"
Prue came up behind her sister, just in time to see gooey black tar materialize under Persia's feet, where carpet had originally been. "Did you do that?"
"I think so," Paige murmured in surprise. "I had just been thinking about stopping her and…" She waved her hand in the direction of the tar. The Charmed One could see her niece struggling to move her feet, but they seemed stuck in the gooey black.
"Nice." Prue was about to make a smart comment when the sound of small whimpering caught her ear. She flew past Paige and jumped over the tar square, landing in the room in which the children were in. Prue gasped.
Blood spatter covered the walls. Everything else was black and smoking. The telekinetic cupped her mouth and padded further, until a small body caught the corner of her eye. She dropped to her knees, touching the blackened arm of a small little girl. Tears leaked from her eyes as she checked for a pulse. It was there, but faint. She was about to call for Leo, when she spotted a second child; a boy. "Leo!"
Paige grabbed for niece's arm, only to have her jerk away. "Oh, you're coming with me young lady!"
"My ass I am!" Persia used her feet hand to aim an electrokinetic bolt at the ceiling, causing a large chunk of plaster to come falling down at Paige.
Just before Paige orbed out, she saw her niece's eyes flash a hot yellow. The plaster fell through her orbs, landing with a thud on the ground. No doubt, had she not moved, it would have knocked her out…or worse.
Prue cradled the little girl in her arms as Leo healed her. At the sound of chanting, she whipped her head around just in time to see Persia disappear in a swathe of dark purple flitting lights.
"Mommy?" The little girl's horse voice brought Prue's attention back to her.
"No sweetie, I'm not-"
"Where's my mommy!"
"Was she here?"
The pigtailed child nodded fiercely, as Leo went to heal her twin brother.
Prue's heart skipped a beat. "Where?" She lowered the child to the floor and began to wave her hand through the smoky air.
The little girl pointed to a corner of the room. "I saw her over there last."
"Leo."
"The boy," the whitelighter protested.
Prue moved across the room, before spotting a crooked form at its edge. She motioned her hand, bringing the limp woman to her. The sight made her stomach turn. She reached out, carefully touching the woman's wrist. "A pulse. Leo! Leo, get over here! She doesn't have much time!"
Leo moved hesitantly from the four-year-old boy, hoping desperately that he'd healed him enough to sustain him until he could get back to him. As he neared Prue, he turned his head away in disgust. "Oh god." He touched her darkened skin and a golden glow erupted instantaneously. Looking to his sister-in-law he asked, "Persia did all this?"
"I think so." Prue touched her stomach. "Glenn said he saw one of Phae's premonitions. He said she killed someone." The telekinetic wasn't sure who, but her gut told her that had she and Paige gotten there a moment later, three people would have been dead instead of one.
"Dear Goddess!"
Prue whipped her head around, seeing her baby sister kneeling over the young boy.
Paige pulled the sandy haired boy into her arms. Blood smeared her snow white arms as she carried him over to her sister. "I can't believe she did this!"
Prue curled his fists. "It wasn't Persia," she hissed. "It was James. Persia would never do something like this! It had to of been a potion. Probably the same orange smoke I saw when he took her from the bathroom."
"But still-"
"But nothing! She's our niece, damnit!"
"If she kills an innocent, Prue, it won't matter whether or not she was under a spell! The Elders will see differently!" Leo argued.
"Well then we'll just have to stop her before she hurts anyone else, won't we?" A gasp drew Prue's attention back to their innocent. She waved her hand, promptly settling the woman back on her feet.
"Where are my children?"
"It's okay," Paige promised. "We've got them." She handed off the boy to Leo, who began to finish up the work he'd already started.
"Mommy!"
The little girl flew past Paige, right into her mother's arms.
"Thank god," the woman breathed. She clutched her daughter. A stream of thankful tears poured from the corners of her eyes. "Who are you people?"
Paige shared a look with her older sister. She replied quietly, "Just protectors of the innocent."
"Here," Leo whispered softly. He handed off the boy to his mother. "He's perfectly fine now."
"Thank you." Her eyes flicked to the hallway, fearfully. "Do you know who that-that monster was?"
"We have no idea," Prue replied in all truthfulness.
TO BE CONTINUED….
