Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:41:06 GMT -5
Chapter Nineteen – To the Death
Flashback
9:50 AM (12:50 PM in Boston)
The sound of a tearful cry caught Prue’s attention as a nearby door slammed open and a woman ran out screaming for a doctor. Certain of what must have happened, Prue quickened her steps and her return to Andy. Much as she hated it, she was slowly accepting that she was going to lose him, again, that many in stage five didn’t even make it this long. Another four hours and it would be twelve hours since Andy went into a coma and entered stage five. No one had made it past twelve hours in stage five.
Prue saw a tall blond man exit a room in front of her with a smile on his face. He flicked something off his face that looked like blood and pursed his lips as if he was whistling. Prue frowned, wondering why no one else noticed him. He was so out of place with the happy-go-lucky look on his face surely someone would. She watched him enter a new room and closed the door behind him.
Confusion and concern pulled her to open the door to the room he’d just left and look inside, trying to learn why he was so happy. What she found horrified her.
Two beds graced the room and on each was a body. Pillows used to suffocate the two patients were still covering their faces. Thoughts raced through Prue’s mind as she slapped the nurse’s button on the wall and ran down the hall. She pushed open the door she’d seen the blond man enter and took in the scene in front of her. One patient already had a pillow covering her face.
The blond man looked up at the sound of the door opening. “Well, hello,” he greeted her pleasantly, letting go of the second pillow covering the second patent’s face. “A lovely day out there isn’t it,” he commented.
Prue ignored him and tried to send the pillow flying with a flick of her eyes. When nothing happened, she was forced to remember the strange switch of powers that had occurred and exhaled in frustration. She closed the door behind her.
“It’s rude to ignore a greeting,” he commented, still with a pleasant tone in his voice.
“You just killed three people and you’re worried about being polite?” Prue asked in disbelief.
His eyes widened. “Leave now,” he ordered, a strain in his still pleasant tone.
Prue’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she replied firmly as she took steps toward him. “You step away from the girl.”
His nostrils flare and he started fighting. “Leave. You must leave.” When she only stepped closer he began to looks panicked. “Why are you ignoring me? No one ignored me.”
“I don’t like what you’re saying,” Prue informed him. “Now, step away from her.”
The only warning Prue got of what happened next was the scrape of the door as the door knob turned. Before she could react a clipboard slammed into the back of her head. The forced of it was enough to send Prue careening into the guard.
Prue slammed her head into one of the hospital beds on the way down and fought to keep conscious.
“What’s taking so long?” the new corner, a blonde professional looking woman. “I’m getting bored with this place.”
“Not all of us are as fast as you are, Jessica,” the blond man drawled. “I ran into that woman,” he pointed down at Prue who was fighting to stay awake. “She doesn’t even seem to notice my powers.”
Jessica Michaels-Darcy looked down at Prue with disdain. “She must be a witch, Oliver.”
Prue felt the hatred rolling off of Jessica. How did Phoebe manage to avoid the massive headaches her powers must come with?
Oliver Michaels, stepped over to where Prue lay, ignoring his intended victim, the pillow falling to the ground as he bumped into it. He leaned down and spat on her. “Stupid witch. Don’t you know we always win?”
Without the use of her normal powers, Prue glanced around through squinted eyes for a weapon. Finding nothing she shot out her arms and shoved Oliver as hard as she could. She hoped he ran into something sharp.
He didn’t, but she shoved him hard enough that he rammed into Jessica. They both fell down into a heap on the floor, toppling over two chairs.
Prue scrambled to her feet and glancing around she didn’t see anything sharp anywhere. Sure, they were warlocks. Sharp objects wouldn’t kill them. Hard blunt objects wouldn’t kill them.
They would, however, slow them down and she needed that time to think. Seeing a pair of empty chairs, she heaved one up and slammed it into Jessica as the woman was trying to push Oliver off of her. The semi-heavy chair had the desire result of knocking Jessica hard enough to knock her out.
Oliver shot his leg out and hooked her around the ankle. He pulled back on his foot causing Prue to lose balance.
As Prue fell she dropped the chair and it landed first on her foot causing pain to shoot up her leg and them it contained its fall, landing on Oliver. Prue focused on her foot as Oliver shoved the chair off of him. Amazement that no one was investigating flashed through Prue’s mind as she took notice of yelling in the room next to them. She didn’t have much time to think about it when Oliver rolled over and onto his feet.
That lasted only a very short time as his knee appeared to buckle. Apparently some part of him had noticed the chair landing on him.
Still he was a warlock and warlocks tended to be very good at shaking off pain. She remembered the very first warlock she had fought with her sisters. Jeremy had been a shock to them. He’d been dating Piper since Grams had died and none of them had suspected that he was evil.
And then there was Nicholas. Jeremy had required the power of three to stop. Or at least they had used it after other things had failed. Nicholas had been harder. He’d coerced their mom into blessing a ring to protect him from their powers and his own powers had been very dangerous, almost deadly. Without a trip to the past and a spell from Grams and Mom they might not have made it.
The three of them had cast the spell together and he’d been vanquished. And when a demon had brought Jeremy back, they had conference called to get rid of him. Nicholas had been easier the second time around. He’d gotten his pound of flesh by sending her to the hospital, but she’d managed to cast the spell to vanquish him first and she’d come out the victor.
Over the decades there had been other warlocks, though not many, some requiring the power of three such as the warlock Dusty Milligan, and others who had been dealt with more easily. Usually, she’d had her sisters to help her, but here and now, she had nothing. Oh, her sisters were out there, but she couldn’t contact them from here and even if she could, she couldn’t use the power of three. If that didn’t make things tough enough, she had Phoebe’s powers rather than her own.
She didn’t know how to use Phoebe’s powers.
There was a crash followed by a crackle in the direction of the window. Prue glanced in that direction and barely had time to duck down as glass shards came at her like razor sharp knives.
“She can do what?!” Prue stared at her sisters in disbelief.
Piper and Paige looked at each other. Paige shrugged. “I’m not sure how else to say it. Sometimes Phoebe can use her empathy to use the powers of someone around her.
“That,” Prue informed her, recalling her own experience with empathy. “Is not. Empathy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not empathy.”
And yet what she knew as empathy, the sometimes crushing feeling of others’ emotions, was definitely there. She was not meant to be an empath, that much was imminently clear to her, but in the almost two weeks since her powers had somehow been switched for Phoebe’s, she had learned to not only function, but to block all but the strongest emotions if she concentrated hard enough. And she could fade out most if they were in another room or sufficiently far away. She’d had to learn. It had been a matter of survival with everything going on during the last week.
Prue had little control over whatever part of Phoebe’s power allowed her sister to use the powers of others, but before this had started Paige had come over a few times to try and help her figure it out. The only one of Paige’s powers that she had managed to use was her ability to call objects to her, probably because it was similar to her own. A grin tugged at her lips. It looked like Oliver had a powers similar to hers as well.
Prue looked at the glass shards on the ground. As she focused on them, they lifted off the floor. She waved her arm and nothing happened. The annoyance took her focus off of them and they crashed to the ground.
Oliver looked at her surprised and then he started chuckling. Prue frowned as Oliver just started laughing harder. “You’re a freaking empath?”
Prue ignored him and focused on the glass shards. A moment later she had them floating, again. This time instead of waving her arm she tried a different tactic. She looked at the broken window while keeping focus on the shards hovering over the floor. Then, with quick flicks of her eyes she sent the glass left in the window and the shards on the ground barreling toward Oliver. “Not exactly,” she informed him as the glass hit him from two sides. “I’m the witch who’s ending you murdering spree.”
Pain poured into Oliver as glass cut through his skin on all sides. Pain alone was not enough to kill a warlock. His skin may have been cut. There may have been glass shards sticking out of his body, but warlocks didn’t bleed, so it was a rather tidy set of wounds.
Pain was enough to distract and Prue used that to her advantage. In a low voice she began to chant a spell that her sister had come up with years before. “Once a flesh and blood mortal man, undo the magic done, immortality ban. Let this warlock’s blood run free and fast. End his life and let him die at long last.”
At first nothing happened. Oliver ignored her throughout the spell as he pulled glass shards out of his body. Apparently his ability to move objects did not include objects imbedded in his body. Then he stopped as red liquid began to pour out of his body. The stunned look on his face was quickly followed by pain as, for the first time in almost four hundred years, blood flowed through his body and onto the ground.
Relief washed through Prue as she realized Paige’s spell worked. She hadn’t known if it would since the spell only worked on warlocks who were not born warlocks.
Oliver crumpled to the ground in front of her. Realizing that he was going to die, he attempted to shove her.
Prue grabbed a hold of the nearest bed to keep from falling. She steadied herself and looked down. With him dying, she needed to focus on the other warlock. Hopefully her spell had worked on her as well.
Before she could focus on her goal she was whipped across the room into the wall. The force with which she hit the wall was enough to knock her unconscious. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was Oliver’s bloody body.