Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 9, 2011 15:01:46 GMT -5
Chapter Fourteen – To Heal a Demon
Leo Wyatt was pulling into the parking lot of a hardware store when the air in the passenger seat distorted and Brianna was sitting next to him. Through the rearview mirror he saw orbs materialize someone in the back seat of the minivan. He stepped on the break as the orbs appeared again and dematerialized someone out of his back seat. Leo put the van into park in the middle of the parking lot and reached for the door handle.
“Oh, come on,” Brianna groaned. “I’m not here to hurt you. I need your help.”
Leo looked at her worried. He left his hand on the door handle. “Who are you?”
“My name is Brianna McInnis,” she informed him. “I’m a witch.”
“You just blinked in here,” Leo protested. “That’s a . . .”
“I am so tired of everyone thinking that just because I have a natural ability to blink, that is makes me a warlock.” She scowled at him. “I’m a witch, but I don’t have time to prove it. Call your sons if you need to . . . call your wife for that matter; she saw that he power doesn’t affect me. But do it quick. I need your help to save the life of someone very important to me.”
“Call your whitelighter,” Leo suggested.
Behind them a car honked its horn.
“Until today, I thought I didn’t have one,” she informed him. “But no whitelighter can help me, or so I was informed by the one that saved my life earlier.”
Leo looked at her concerned.
“I beg you, help me.”
Leo sighed and took his hand off the door handle. “Why can’t whitelighter’s help you?”
“He’s a demon,” she said in a whispered voice, “but he’s good. I swear, he’s good. There are demonic healers out there, but the whitelighter was right that they’d refuse to help Max. They’d kill him given the chance. And because he’s a demon I can’t even take him to a normal doctor. Please, help me.”
Another horn honked behind them.
Leo pulled the van out of park and pulled into a parking spot. “What happened to him?” he asked as he climbed out of the van and hurried around to the passenger side. When he got there Brianna had climbed around to back.
She threw him a blanket. “Spread it out on the ground. There’s no way you can work on him in here.”
“No way I can work on him in this parking lot at all,” Leo informed her. “Too much chance of exposure, not just for magic, but also for him. This is a completely unsterile environment. Can you blink us both to my home?”
She nodded. “Get in. Close the door.”
Leo did as she directed and climbed in next to her, the blanket in hand. Once he had shut the door he climbed in as close as he could to her.
Brianna knelt down so she was close to Max. Then, she reached up her arm and wrapped it up around Leo’s waist. She blinked and they were gone.
They reappeared in one of the guest rooms in the manor. Max was on the bed. Brianna let go of Leo and got out of the way.
Leo dropped the blanket at the foot of the bed and started carefully removing Max’s clothes to get a closer look at his wounds. “All right, start talking. What happened to him?”
She nodded. “Yesterday, we were at your wife’s restaurant . . .”
“What happened today?” Leo requested as he focused on his patient.
“It’s related.”
He sighed. “Continue then.”
She nodded. “Yesterday, we were at your wife’s restaurant when one of my friends saw some demons. We didn’t know then what they were up to, but ended up enlisting the help of your sons when your son became suspicious of us and separated one of my friends from the rest of us. It turned out the demons were trying to spy on your son or something like that. I’m still not sure.”
Leo tried not to worry about his sons too much. It was getting harder with every word she spoke, but he had a patient to see to.
“I won’t go into all the details,” she informed him, “but Max and I were going to confront two of the demons when Max got cold feet. At least it seemed that way. It’s hard to tell with him. The demons were the same kind of demons as his mother. I don’t know much about them, but they are called Synergists. Apparently they can make electricity and so can Max. He used that against them and caused an explosion. I was blown into one of the cave walls which knocked me out. I woke up to a whitelighter healing my wounds. He said he couldn’t heal Max, but I convinced him that you could help Max.”
“What makes you so sure I can,” Leo asked. “I’m going to need a lot of medical supplies I don’t have from the looks of this and I have never dealt with demon anatomy.”
“Not even with Cole Turner?”
Leo looked at her surprised. It had been a long time since he had heard that name. “What do you know about that? I don’t even think you were born when he was vanquished.”
She shrugged. “I may be a witch, but most of my friends are demons and I’ve spent time in the underworld. Balthazar is a curse word down there and he’s so poorly thought of that his mother, who is still alive and causing trouble for good, doesn’t bother using her married name.”
Leo looked at her in concern. The idea that Cole’s mother was still out there was unsettling, but not something he had time to worry about. He turned his attention back to his patient.
The door to the room opened and Leo’s wife entered with two of her sister. “I heard voices down here, but I didn’t hear you arrive.” Piper stopped and took in the scene in front of her. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“I’ll explain,” Brianna offered.
“It’s all right,” Leo put her off. “She asked for my help, Piper,” Leo informed his wife before turning back to his patient.
Paige walked over to the bed and looked down at Max. “What happened to him?”
“We tried to fight some demons, the one’s Toby told you about yesterday,” Brianna announced, looking straight at Piper. “They’re gone, but now Max is dying and there’s nothing I can do.”
Paige held out her hands over Max attempting to heal him. When it didn’t work, she frowned. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
Leo nodded. “He’s a demon.”
Paige gulped and looked at Brianna. “And you are?”
“A witch,” Brianna informed her, quite firmly. “That’s my . . . boyfriend . . .”
“Not true,” a raspy voice said from the bed.
All eyes turned to look at Max who was struggling to open his eyes. It seemed to be a loosing battle.
“You’re awake!” Brianna exclaimed, running to his side.
“I wish I weren’t,” he rasped. “It hurts. I should be dead. Why am I still alive? Didn’t I vanquish the Synergists?”
“Vanquishing Synergists doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll die,” Prue pointed out from the door way.
“It does if you’re a Synergist,” Max informed her in a raspy whisper before losing consciousness, again.
“Yes, it usually does,” Prue admitted. “Piper, I’m going to see if they’re in the Book of Shadows. I know a little about Synergists, but the Book had more info. Presumably the info is still there.” With a glance at the unconscious young man on the bed, she left the room for the attic.
“Will be live?” Brianna asked Leo.
“I don’t know,” Leo repeated his earlier response. “I just don’t know enough about his anatomy.”
“He’s only half Synergist. I don’t know if that helps.”
“Only if the other half is human,” Leo said, much to her disappointment.
She shook her head. “No, Snake Demon.”
Leo frowned, but didn’t comment. He turned to look at his wife. “Piper, do you know when Ava get’s home?”
Piper shook her head. “I can call over there. I’m sure the kids are home by now. They should know.” She started out and turned around. “Why do you need Ava?”
“Ava’s a surgeon,” Leo reminded her. “I haven’t performed surgery in over eighty years. That makes me more than little rusty.”
“Surgery!” Brianna gulped.
Piper left the room in search of a phone.
Leo nodded. “It’s probable. He’s in bad shape.”
“But he woke up,” Brianna protested. “Surely that counts for something.”
“It’s a good sign,” Leo admitted, “but doesn’t guarantee that he’ll be all right. Ava’s a highly qualified surgeon.”
“And what’s she going to say when she learns that her patient is a demon?” Brianna wanted to know.
“She’ll have questions,” Leo admitted, “but she trusts us.”
Brianna sighed as she looked down at Max. “If she can help him, then get her here. I can’t lose him.” Tears dripped down her face. “The idiot thinks he’s invincible.”
“Actually, I think he knew exactly what he was doing,” Prue commented as she reentered the room. “You heard him. He expected to die. Was retreat an option?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Once they started attacking me, I didn’t think about that. I was so focused on getting rid of them.” She sobbed. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t sound like you knew how this could affect him,” Prue commented. “Why’s that?”
“He didn’t want to talk about that part of him,” she told her. “We only talked about his other half, because of his brothers.”
“Brothers?”
Brianna nodded. “Snake Demons tend to have extremely large families, sometimes dozens in a nest if they are full blood. It tends to draw them together.”
“The fact that they’re related?” Prue gave her a look of disbelief. “That doesn’t sound like demons.”
“There’s a lot of variety in demons,” Brianna informed her. “You just see the ones that attack directly. Some attack behind the scenes, getting others to do their dirty work. Others don’t attack, preferring their solitude. Some prefer to work along, trusting no one. And there are some who find strength in numbers. With Snake Demons they have found that if they do not form allegiances, they will be overwhelmed in a power struggle.”
“Doesn’t sound much like a snake,” Prue commented as she put the Book of Shadows down on a desk in the room.
“It has more to do with their demonic form and their reproductive ability than anything else,” Brianna enlightened her. “Does it say anything about Synergists?”
Prue nodded. She pointed to a page that has the headline, “Synergist”.
“Demons who work together
With other Synergists to
Create deadly electric fields
When they fight each other
It is usually deadly
For all combatants
Death of one Synergist
Vanquishes all Synergists
Within a large area
Believed to have
Extra limbs which
Cannot be seen
Immune to water damage
Only known vanquish is
An electrical overload”
With other Synergists to
Create deadly electric fields
When they fight each other
It is usually deadly
For all combatants
Death of one Synergist
Vanquishes all Synergists
Within a large area
Believed to have
Extra limbs which
Cannot be seen
Immune to water damage
Only known vanquish is
An electrical overload”
Brianna glanced over at the bed. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
Prue looked at her, but didn’t say anything. She just let Brianna speak.
“CT and he followed them around forever,” Brianna commented. “He had to know that they were Synergist ahead of time,” she concluded, “so why didn’t he tell me?”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to worry you before it was absolutely necessary,” Prue suggested. “What I want to know is, why we should trust you?”
Brianna reached out her hand and touched the book. “I couldn’t touch that if I was evil.”
“There are ways around that,” Prue informed her, unconvinced.
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Brianna retorted. “We dealt with the demon. Ask your nephews. They were over at my house yesterday.” She looked across the room where Leo was still examining Max. He’d removed Max shirt completely and what was left of Max’s jeans had been disposed over. She looked away as she realized that Max wore only his underwear.
Piper entered the room and walked over to the bed. “Ava’s on her way over here. She agreed to help out, but she needs to get some things first. She did want to know if there was any chance of bringing him into the hospital. She thinks she could arrange to keep nonmagicals from finding out.”
Leo looked over at Brianna.
She shook her head. “Bring him in without ID and without medical coverage and it would cause an investigation.”
“It might save his life,” Leo reminded her. “No ID at all?”
“Somewhere,” she admitted. “He did attend school through college, but there is definitely no medical coverage and he has no driver’s license. Out of my friends, I’m the only one that can drive. And only Toby has a nondriver’s license.”
“Birth certificate?”
She nodded. “Registered in Concord.”
“That will work,” Leo informed her. “We’ll need some more info, but this is probably his best chance.”
She stared down at Max laying unconscious on the bed. “What about the medical coverage?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Leo assured her. He looked up at his wife. “Can you call back Ava? We need to get going as fast as we can. If Paige is will, we should be able to get him to the hospital by the same method he was brought to me.”
Paige looked at him curiously. “Oh, how’s that?”
“Being orbed into the back of a vehicle,” Leo informed her. “Will you?”
Paige nodded. The very fact that he’d been orbed somewhere earlier relieving some of her concerns.
“I’ll go call Ava back,” Piper assured him as she headed back into the hall.
Leo looked at Brianna. “Now I’ve got a tricky question for you. If we need it, can you find a blood donor? He doesn’t exactly have normal blood.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Brianna assured him. “He’s one of sixty-four. At least a few of those like him enough to donate blood.”