Post by StoryGirl83 on May 15, 2009 22:44:06 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Two – Chris’ Attacker Revealed
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The scene that greeted Chris, Piper, and Paige was a mess. Janice was on the ground, rolling over, trying to get up. Hank was orbing, possibly after panic orbing. Leo had raised Wyatt’s blue shield around him. And Wyatt was flush against the wall, his arms straight at his sides, gritting and furious.
“I want my powers back!” Wyatt yelled as Alanna reentered the room from the den.
Alanna took in the scene and spotted her family’s book of shadows opened and upside down on the floor. “Enchant!” She yelled and the book vanished.
Chris waved his arm at the demon in the center of the room before Alanna even stopped speaking. When nothing happened he groaned. Right. Mom’s powers. He waved his hands up and down and parts of the scene froze, namely the demon and Wyatt.
“Wyatt froze?” Paige looked surprised.
“He doesn’t have his powers,” Piper reminded her. “Leo does, so I guess he’s not a witch right now.”
Hank looked at her curious.
Leo frowned at the image of his son, who looked like his wife, frozen against the wall. “Unfreeze him, Chris.”
“How?” Chris asked, unsure. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“So Wyatt’s frozen because without his powers, he’s not a witch,” Hank asked, tension visibly struggling in his body for anyone who cared to look as he struggled with the question so prevalent on his mind for almost two months. Was he a witch? And if so why couldn’t he cast spells? Why didn’t he have a power?
Behind him, Janice scrambled to her feet.
“Yeah,” Chris agreed, concurring with what his mom had said a moment before. “But it won’t last long. Freezes never do.”
“So the fact that Uncle Leo,” Hank looked at Leo briefly before looking back at Chris, “isn’t frozen means he’s currently a witch.”
Chris nodded. “Yeah. Basically. I mean it’s either that or certain types of upper level demons, but this is Dad. And he has Wyatt’s powers, so that would actually . . .”
“Chris!” Piper exclaimed. “Focus. Unfreeze your brother.”
“How?!” Chris questioned, exasperated.
“The same way you freeze, but focus on Wyatt and aim your hands at him.”
Chris sighed and tried to do that, but before he could Wyatt and the demon both unfroze, so Chris focused on the demon instead and froze him.
Wyatt felt the pressure on his body lift and he was able to move away from the wall. He looked around the room and frowned. “Was I frozen?” His voice, or rather his mother’s as it truly was, sounded stunned, in disbelief.
Unnoticed, Alanna slipped back out of the room.
“Sorry,” his brother apologized. Chris turned his head back to Piper. “What now?”
“Unfreeze his head,” Piper ordered him. “I want to talk to him.”
Chris blinked at her, unsure he heard right. “Unfreeze his head? Is that possible?”
Piper nodded. “Yep. I remember Prue suggesting that after we summoned the wrong demon and wanted to know why. You can do it.”
“Focus again? On his head?” When Piper nodded, he turned to face the demon. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them he waved his hands at the demon. He breathed a sigh of relief as the demon’s head unfroze. “Be careful. I’m not sure how his power works.”
Piper marched around to look the demon in the eye. “Fix this.”
The demon snarled at her and glared.
“You hired that demon,” Piper glared right back. “Fix this.”
“You can’t,” snarled, scratchy words informed her.
“I didn’t say me,” Piper shot back. “You. Fix this.”
“Even if I could,” the demon replied in that scratchy voice, “why would I?”
“I’ll make your death less painful,” Piper offered.
The demon sneered at her. “Not interested.”
“And it was such a generous offer,” Hank whispered to his sister.
Janice shrugged and whispered back, “Coming from Aunt Piper when her family is in danger or whatever you call this situation, that’s pretty generous in my book.”
“I want to know why you came after us.”
The demon snorted. “Why do any of us ever come after you? Because you’re in the way. Because you’re good witches.” He gave her a look of pure malice. “Because killing is fun. Now!”
Everyone looked at him confused until they heard a scream from the back of the room. Get away!”
Hank winced as his sisters scream from a foot away pierced his ear. He ignored it and turned to look at her. “Yikes!”
A tentacle was slowly wrapping its way toward his sister’s neck. He waved his hand at it, trying to send it away with one of the only offensive powers in a whitelighter’s arsenal.
By that time the others in the room had turned around and the demon had unfrozen. Hank’s eyes widened as he saw the first demon’s hands rise up and all the light fixtures on the walls started to shake. “Orb! Freeze! Something!”
Janice closed her eyes and pointed her palms behind her at the tentacles coming at her again. Ice flowed out of her hands, encasing the demon in ice.
Piper waved her hands, automatically trying to freeze the room. She glared at her hands in frustration and turned to look for her son. “Chris!”
Chris nodded as he waved his hands, mimic the motion his mom had just made. The demon and Wyatt froze, again. He turned to his brother and focused his attention on him and waved his hands, again.
Wyatt resumed moving and sighed. “I was frozen, again, wasn’t I?”
Chris shrugged. “Sorry.”
Wyatt scowled and looked at the ice encased demon behind Janice, just as Alanna raced back into the room. “Where were you?”
“Me?” Alanna looked surprised. “Research. I was researching. Couldn’t leave the book here, so I sent it back to its home. Means I couldn’t use it. I got something though . . .” she glanced at the second demon behind her sister, “at least about the first demon. He’d called Tachotered. He breaks stuff.”
Chris stared at her for a couple of seconds and burst out laughing. “I hope you have more than that.”
Alanna raised her hand up, a piece of paper fluttering in the air as she waved it. “I’ve got a vanquishing spell.”
“Sounds good,” Janice told her as she stood and walked away from the demonic icicle. “Care to see if you can make that thing go away?”
“I wouldn’t,” Chris warned before Alanna could take more than a step. After she gave him a questioning look he added, “One thing at a time. You don’t know that will work.”
“I don’t know it won’t,” she countered. She lifted her hands, but instead of aiming at the tentacle demon, she aimed at the hands of Tachotered. Fine streamed out of her hands and before the stunned eyes of her family Tachotered’s hands and arms melted away like wax. She grinned up at them. “I can’t vanquish him, but I can render him powerless. Not harmless and he can still shimmer, but he can’t use his other more dangerous power.”
Time resumed and Tachotered’s eyes widened and he started screaming. Chris turned around and focused on the demon, waving his hands, freezing the demon. Then, he unfroze the demon’s head. “Ready to talk?”
“What did you do?” Tachotered screamed.
“Gave you a reason to talk, I hope.”
“I think not,” the demon told him.
Chris looked back at Alanna. “Anything else melt like that?”
Alanna nodded solemnly. “Feet and legs.”
Tachotered’s eyes widened more. “Just vanquish me all ready.”
Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Chris shook his head. “I think not,” he said echoing the demon’s words. “What to tell me how this can be fixed?”
“Let me go.”
Chris shook his head and waited.
“I wouldn’t help even if I could.”
“Have fun, Alanna,” Chris turned and took a step out of the way.
“Wait!”
Yes! Chris held up his hand for Alanna to wait and turned back to face the demon. “I’m listening.”
The demon’s eyes glanced down at where his arms once where.
“And waiting,” Chris added, glancing at Alanna before giving Tachotered a pointed look.
Hank hid a smile behind his hand as her heard Janice whisper, “Apparently I didn’t get the cooler power.”
Hank caught her attention and glanced back at the frozen tentacle demon. “Well, I think that’s quite cold.”
Janice frowned for a moment and then her eyes widened before she smacked his shoulder. “Why you!”
Chris glanced at them and back at the still silent demon. He sighed. “Fine. You have until I count to . . .”
“You can’t summon him.”
“Then, how does one hire him?”
“And I suppose you want to hire him?” Tachotered shot back.
Chris just glanced at Alanna and the demon shuttered. “You know I don’t. If they can be hired there has to be a way to find them.”
“What do you care about finding him? It won’t help fix what he did.”
“Then, what will?”
Piper flicked her hands at the demon, wishing she had control of her own powers. It had an interesting reaction, causing the demon’s head to bob back and forth and his eyes to roll backward in his head.
Chris looked at the result with interest. “Let’s keep him conscious.”
“He was taunting you,” Piper informed him.
Chris blinked and looked between his mother and the demon. “Not obviously.”
“Quite obviously.” She walked over to face the now dizzy demon. “Let’s talk.”
“His powers are in his hands,” the demon told her hastily.
“Then, we do need to find him.”
Tachotered snorted. “Only if you want to be stuck like that.”
“Make sense,” she ordered.
“You find a way to get him here and he’ll self destruct,” the demon retorted. “No need for any of your vanquishing spells and potions. He self destructs and you are stuck that way forever. There is no way to reverse it without the Sjelmikser that cursed you.”
“Cursed?”
“You don’t think what that foul mischief maker did is a curse?”
“You do?”
“Try being a powerless mortal for a few weeks and you will, too.”
Wyatt looked horrified at the thought of a few weeks without any powers. “Are you saying this isn’t your body?”
“I got my body back and my powers. When they mess with demons they usually fix things eventually.”
“Tell me,” Paige spoke up, “if you can’t stand these Sjelmikser, what are you doing hiring them?”
“You think I hired that foul being?”
Paige nodded. “Well, yeah. You’re here.”
Tachotered spat at her. “I never would. No, I was hired same as that thing was and that other one,” he glared across the room at the tentacle demon still frozen in ice, though the ice appeared to be melting.
Paige exchanged a look with her sister before looking back at the demon. “Hired? By whom?”
“I’ll tell you how to get around Sjelmikser, because I can’t stand those things, but no amount of torture can get the other out of me.”
“Drop it, Aunt Paige,” Wyatt insisted. “Someone’s always after us. We need to find out what to do about this demon that caused all this confusion.”
“Confusion,” Tachotered tried the word out, “yes, that’s about right. The demon of confusion.”
“And how do we unconfused this demon of confusion,” Piper glared at him.
“You stab the eye in the middle of its right hand and keep the hole open until the hand glows bright red and explodes. That will reorganize any and everything that particular Sjelmikser mixed up, from all times. Be wary though, some people may be used to being in someone else’s body.”
“If they self destruct as soon as you see them how can you get close enough to do that?” Chris asked.
Tachotered snorted. “I neither know nor care.” Then, he shimmered out.
Chris groaned. “He unfroze. And I didn’t notice.”
“Do you think he told the truth?” Wyatt asked, looked at the spot where the demon had been.
“Demons lie,” Alanna retorted.
“But did he?”
Leo shook his head. “No. He didn’t lie.”
Everyone in the room turned to look at Leo, but it was Wyatt who asked, “How do you know?”
Leo smiled slightly. “Because I know how to use whitelighter powers, son.”
“I can tell when someone is lying and someone is telling the truth?” Wyatt asked, skeptical.
Leo smiled a little more. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but the end result is, if you know how to read it, then sometimes you can. It’s more a feeling than anything else.” He looked at Paige. “Like your evil sense. I simply knew.”
“Doesn’t sound complicated,” Wyatt commented.
“It doesn’t sound it, but if you don’t listen to that tiny feeling in the back of your mind, you’ll never even notice what it is trying to tell you.”
Wyatt sighed. “Okay, so you believe we can trust him. How do we do this without that demon self destructing?”
There was silence as everyone tried to think of something. Suddenly a smile lit up on Chris’ face. “I know exactly how we’re going to do that!”
“How’s that?” Alanna asked.
Chris grinned. “You’ll see. Just take care of the demon icicle before it leaves, too.” He turned to look at Piper. “Mom, I need your help.”