Post by StoryGirl83 on Dec 25, 2013 2:12:44 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-One - Worth It
Flashback
and child Jessica
Flashback
and child Jessica
10:07 AM (11:07 PM in Boston)
The room was silent. That was the first thing Seth noticed when he appeared in the room. The sound of sobbing broke the silence and Seth turned toward the sound.
A dark haired girl knelt on the side of a bed, tears streaming down her face. A second dark haired girl was at her side, hugging her from behind.
“There’s still time,” the second girl’s whispered voice reached Seth. “He’s not dead yet. Mom said . . .”
“Mom’s not doing anything,” the other girl protested with a sob. “I get it. I do. It took me hours to get through the door and even then Faith had to practically shove me through it, but nothing can get done if no one does anything.”
“Things are getting done,” Seth informed them revealed his presence. When the sisters looked at him startled he added, “Pat and Vicki Trudeau, I presume.”
Pat leveled a look at him as she stood. “Do I know you?”
He shook his head. “No, we’ve not met. I know most of your family though. Aunt Paige sent me to update your mom on the situation. Do you know where I can find her?”
“Aunt Paige?” Vicki asked with a sniff. “When’d she send you?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” he decided after a moment’s hesitation. “I filled Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo in first.”
“Then how’d you get here so fast?” Vicki asked at the same time Pat asked, “Aunt? Uncle? Are you related to us?”
Seth shook his head with a slight smile. “It’s honorary. You aunts helped my dad reunite with me after my manticore mother was . . . gone, which also answers how I got here so fast. I shimmered.”
“You’re a demon?” Pat asked startled, pulling Vicki to her feet and behind her.
“Raised by my human dad with my human brother and my dad’s human girlfriend,” Seth informed them, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Your cousin, Wyatt, is my best friend. Enough of this. My name is Seth Silberman and I need to talk to your mom.”
Pat relaxed all of a sudden and she let go of her sister’s arm. “You’re Seth,” she said with a little bit of wonder. “Melinda mentioned you.”
“In less than glowing terms I’m sure,” he scoffed.
Pat’s lips twitched. “Well, yes, but she did say you were good.”
“Will you help me find your mom then?”
Vicki walked out from behind her sister and grabbed up Prue’s purse from the night stand. She started rummaging through it."
“I would, but I’m not sure where she is,” Pat admitted. “She should have been back by now."
Behind her Vicki pulled out a scrying crystal and a brochure. Ignoring them, she started unfolding the brochure.
“She hasn’t been leaving this room unless she has to,” Pat added.
“My dad’s the same way,” Seth agreed. “My brother’s only stage three, but when stage three means you have about two days to live . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” she agreed quickly with a gulp. “I want out of Boston when this is over. Too many are dead.”
“Found her!” Vicki announced.
The other two looked at her startled.
Seth was the first to find his tongue. “How?” While he’d heard of scrying, it wasn’t something he’d seen a lot of and she’d already returned the crystal to her mom’s purse.
“Where?” was Pat’s question.
Vicki ignored Seth’s question and pointed to a room on the map in the brochure. “Here.”
“I’m on it,” Seth informed them heading toward the door.
“We’re coming, too,” Pat insisted, grabbing his arms.
Seth turned and looked at them. “Can you fight?”
“Why would we need to?” Pat countered.
“I don’t think your mom would let doctor’s hold her up for very long,” Seth announced. “There are two warlocks on the loose and maybe she met up with them. Or maybe they’ll come here, in which case someone needs to stay here. Can you fight?”
Pat stared at him for several seconds. “Vicki, stay here.”
“But . . . but,” Vicki protested.
“Stay here,” Pat repeated. “Your powers may not be much help here, but you can cast spells which is more than I can do. Mom doesn’t know him. If she’s in some sort of trouble, she’ll shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn’t need that.”
Vicki heaved in a huge breath. “Stay here? Alone? I could barely get in the door and you want me to stay here alone? What if dad dies? What if you aren’t here and Mom’s not here and dad dies?”
“I’m sorry,” Pat told her sister as she gave her a hug. “We just have to hope that doesn’t happen. Be brave.”
Vicki gulped and heaved in another breath. “I’ll try.”
“If you’re coming, then come,” Seth called from the doorway. “I understand why you are hesitant to leave her, but we don’t know what’s happening with your mom, so we need to go.”
As soon as they got into the hall they noticed how empty it seemed. They headed down the hall in the direction Vicki had indicated. There was a single nurse at the nurse’s station. When they started past her she held up her palm.
Seth frowned.
“Sorry, no one but staff down that way,” she told him.
Seth’s frowned deepened. He looked down the hallway in the direction they had been headed. Seeing a dozen or more people coming in and out of a room close to the one Vicki had pointed out her sighed and turned a smile at the nurse. “Of course. Thank you for your time. My . . . cousin and I will be on our way then.”
Pat frowned at him startled. “What . . ?”
Seth grabbed her arm and pulled her along the corridor. Once they had rounded a corner he let go. “We can’t rouse suspicion. There’s another way.”
“My mom’s down there,” Pat reminded him. “What are you thinking?”
“Did you see how many people where down there? We weren’t getting into the room your sister pointed out even if it wasn’t the one they were focused on which it may well be.”
“Then, how?”
Seth sighed. “It depends on if they are in the room your mom’s in or not. Can you find out?”
“What?” Pat looked at him startled.
“Your sister pointed out a room, 421. I couldn’t see the room number from where we were standing, but maybe you could. I bet you could come up with some reason for standing there at the nurse’s station for long enough to trying and get a good angle to read the number on the doors.”
“Or we could count,” Pat suggested.
He snorted. “Or we could do that. I didn’t do that when we were in that hall.”
“Well, we know it happened after mom left the room, because if it didn’t then she wouldn’t be down that hall.” She groaned. “Do you think it’s mom?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he admitted.
“Right,” Pat said, deciding something unsaid. “I’ll see what I can do.” She walked back around the corner and up to the nurse’s station. She stopped in front of the nurse and leaned up against the counter. When the nurse looked up she flashed her an unhappy smile. “I was wondering, can you give me some information about a patient?” She wasn’t sure what name to say, but she’d think of something.
“Are you a relative?”
Pat shook her head and glanced down the hall. She saw a familiar woman walk out of the busy room sobbing and gulped. “Classmate. Her name is Casey Rigby. I’m new to the area and she’s been really nice to me since I arrived. She was diagnosed just before they shut down the schools.”
The nurse shook her head. “Sorry, only relatives. That’s the rule.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?” Pat pleaded. “I understand that it’s against the rules, but my dad got sick a few hours before she did and he’s stage five, so I’m worried about her.”
The nurse glared at her. “I said no information,” she reminded Pat even as she typed in the info into the computer. Her eyes widened, her lips formed an “O”, and then her eyes softened. “I’m terribly sorry.” She glanced back toward the crowd and Pat knew she was right.
“What’s the matter?” Pat pressed, having to hear it both to know and to see if she could get the room number. “What happened to Casey?” She hated that this was at Casey’s expense, but there was nothing she could do to help Casey now.
"I'm sorry about your friend," the nurse hedged as she looked at Pat with sad eyes.
Pat frowned. Casey hadn’t actually been her friend, but she’d liked the older girl.
“She was in room 425 down the hall, but you won’t be able to go down that way.” The nurse shook her head. “I’m sorry. This is really hard. This job is never easy, but until this last week or so there was the joy of seeing someone recover.”
“I don’t understand how she could be dead,” Pat heaved in a deep breath. “She started showing symptoms after me dad and he’s bad, but he’s not dead.”
The nurse bit her lip, but she didn’t say anything else.
Pat sighed and walked back to Seth.
He was leaning against a wall with his eyes closed. His eyes snapped open as she approached.
“Tired?”
“No time to be tired,” he replied paraphrasing what his best friend had told him earlier. “Did you learn anything?”
“More than I wanted to know,” Pat admitted. “The room everyone’s hovering around belonged to a girl I know. Room 425. She’s dead.” Tears shimmered in her eyes as she said the last.
Seth was at a loss for words. Finally, he spoke, saying only, “I’m sorry.”
Pat blinked away tears. “I barely knew her, but she was nice to me and there haven’t been a whole lot of people willing to let the new girl in.”
Still not sure how to respond, Seth stayed quiet.
Pat heaved in a few breaths. “We’d better get going. We know they aren’t in the room Mom’s in and she might need us.”
He nodded. “Come here then,” he directed her, pulling her into a hug. As soon as he had her safely tucked into his arms he glanced around and shimmered out of there.
Pat’s eyes slid shut, intensifying the unfamiliar feeling in spades. When she opened them everything was dark. “Were are we?” she whispered as she tried to adjust to the dark.
“Shh,” Seth warned back from an uncertain location to her right. After a moment he added, “Stay here,” and pushed open a door revealing them to be in a hospital room bathroom.
“You don’t seem like much,” a voice informed Prue through the haze of pain. Bitterness laced her voice as she added, “so how did you take down my brother like that?”
Prue tried not to give away that she was awake as she looked up through her lashes.
“A lone witch,” the voice spat out. “You’d think a four-hundred-year-old warlock could manage a single stupid witch and yet clearly there is more to you than meets the eyes.” There was a pause and then, “So what do I do with you. You’re abilities are rather useless to me, since they are rather ordinary abilities.”
Cold fingers touched Prue’s neck and yanked her into a premonition.
A young girl was dressed in a plain black gown with a white apron. She clung to the skirt of a woman who bore a resemblance to Jessica. The girl looked up at the woman and at the paper the woman was examining. In thin black letters were the words, “Blood of the offspring flows as a flood. Death begins anew, cloaked within a hood. Water drinkable only by the magical few. Death’s cold lips kiss the untrue. Time flows on and the poison spread. Until the whole mortal world lies dead. This offering I give as my appeal. With a witch’s death seal this deal.”
Prue gasped as she came out of the premonition.
Jessica let out a little thrill. “Premonitions. Now, that’s more like it.”
Knowing the game was up, Prue opened her eyes. She was just fast enough to see Jessica lift up an atheme and then that atheme disappear with a blur.
“What in the underworld was that?” Jessica swirled about.
Prue kicked out her legs and Jessica fell hard onto the floor. Prue looked across the room at where a young man with lightish brown hair looked down at the atheme in his hands.
He looked up, as if he sensed Prue’s eyes on him. “Looks like your mom didn’t really need our help,” he commented in the direction of the hospital room bathroom.
“Are you sure she’s out?” Pat’s voice asked from inside the bathroom. “I’d rather not get in the way.”
Prue frowned. “For the moment. Pat, who is this?”
Pat peaked her head out of the bathroom. “That’s Seth. Melinda mentioned him, remember. He’s Wyatt’s friend.”
“Aunt Paige sent me,” Seth offered. “She wanted me to catch you up on what’s going on.”
Prue stared down at Jessica and groaned. she couldn't do it, not when Jessica was out cold. She'd made Jessica mortal, the blood flowing out of the wound in Jessica's head was proof of that, but now she felt her conscience prick at the thought of killing her while she was unconscious.
"Mom, are you okay?"
Prue turned startled to look at her older daughter and the young man with her, the unfamiliar young man who has stopped Jessica from landing a killing blow before Prue could regain her feet. "Who are you?"
"Mom?" Pat stepped back startled.
"Not you, Pat," Prue assured her daughter. "Him."
"Seth Silberman," he replied easily. "I'm a good friend of your nephew, Wyatt."
"A fast friend of his," Prue commented with raised eyebrow.
Seth shrugged. "We shared a playpen when we first met and on frequent visits after that. As we grew older we played together a lot and he orbed us places. I'm here because Aunt Paige asked me to fill you and Piper in on what's going on."
"Aunt Paige?" Prue frowned at him. "Are you related to Henry?"
Seth waved it off. "Honorary title."
Prue nodded. Though she hadn't met him before, she'd heard enough from her sisters about him to not be too worried once she knew his name.
"What's the message?"
"First, there is a way to counter this that has been used before," he informed her pacing the room. "We should really get out of here."
Prue stared down at Oliver and Jessica, one dead, one likely to tell the story with her own slant when she woke. Jessica needed to be dealt with, but Prue couldn't kill her, not like this. She turned to look at Seth. "I know you didn't come through the door, so how'd you come in?"
Seth blinked in surprise. “I . . . uh . . . I shimmered.”
"Good. I can use that."
Seth's eyes widened. "You can?"
She nodded. "I don't know if she can blink or not. It's rare, but it happens and she did run in here, so I'm not sure. I don't have time or the ingredients to make a stripping potion, so I need a string. I'll bind her powers and then have you drop her off somewhere she can't get out of. It's only temporary, but it should buy me enough time to get this," she grimaced at the bed with the dead girl, "dealt with."
"I know a place I can lock her up where she can't blink out of." He gave her a wry look. "I'm just not sure if I can get out."
"How do you normally get out?" Prue wanted to know, her curiosity roused.
"It's left locked and I think Chris has the key," Seth shrugged as he examined the two bodies and tried to figure out what to do with Jessica.
Prue frowned. "Just where is this place?"
"The back-room at P3."
"P3?" Prue gaped at him. "Why does it have an anti-teleportation spell on it?"
Seth shrugged. "I've never asked, but I know Aunt Piper lets Chris keep the key so I'll have to get the key from him."
Prue nodded. "Get Pat and me back to Andy's room before you take her. And be careful. I don't know if she can blink, but she threw me across the room without touching me."
Seth glanced over at where Jessica lay. "Can do."
"And be fast," Prue urged him. "I don't know why they aren't here yet, but they're going to hear this." Before Seth could respond, she squinted her eyes and flung Oliver's dead body out the broken hospital window.
Startled, Seth didn't react as the crinkling of the glass brought shouts from the hall.
"Get us out of her," Prue demanded in a whisper.
Seth started and grabbed Pat. "Hide in the bathroom," he whispered back as he pulled Pat down next to Jessica's prone body. "I'll be back he assured her as he shimmered out with Pat and Jessica.
Not having time to argue as the voices came closer to the door Prue started moving. None of what they were saying registered as Prue slipped into the bathroom. She started to reach for the door when the outer door opened. Pulling her arm back in, Prue slipped into the darkness.
A faint sound was the only warning Prue got before she was grabbed from behind. The air around her distorted. The darkness of the bathroom turned to the light of Andy's hospital room and slowly the distorted image cleared.
Seth let go of her and stepped away.
Prue looked around. Pat was up against the wall looking at Jessica wearily. Vicki was huddled up in the chair next to Andy's bed with her knees hugged in her arms. "Seth, deal with her first, then return and deliver Paige's message."
He nodded and squatted down next to Jessica. In a shimmer of distorted air he was gone.