Anywhere.
In fact the signs of ancient life weren't even complete. As they surveyed the scene, Josh suddenly gasped and grabbed Phoebe's arm.
“Look!” he whispered, pointing over the city's roofs. In the distance Phoebe saw an expanse of desert. And smack-dab in the middle was a pyramid. Or at least . . . the beginnings of one. The giant structure was only half-finished. Its pointed top was a work-in-progress. Phoebe could even spot workers using ropes and pulleys to haul a giant block up the inclined pyramid wall.
“Ancient Egypt, it is,” Phoebe said, looking at Josh with scared eyes.
“What did you do to me?” Josh blurted, glaring at her.
“Excuse me?” Phoebe sputtered. “What did I do to you? You're the one who spewed the time portal out of your head.”
“What are you talking about?” Josh said. “One minute I'm on a lame date with this girl named Paige. The next minute she's in my apartment. She's changed clothes. And you're there beating my brains out, after which, I get sucked into some sort of vortex that spits me out a thousand years ago.”
“Wait a minute,” Phoebe sputtered. “Are you telling me you don't remember anything after your date with Paige? That was two days ago!”
“Or a thousand years in the future, depending on how you look at it,” Josh said. “Okay, this is too freaky to even comprehend. So let's just try to figure out where we are and how to get back to San Francisco.”
“Fine,” Phoebe snapped, spinning around in irritation. She started to stalk down the hallway, but almost immediately, she skidded to a halt. She heard a rustling at the other end of the hall—then the unmistakable shuffle of footsteps.
“Trouble,” she squeaked over her shoulder to Josh. She glanced down at her gooey halter top and then at Josh's clunky sneakers. “Someone's coming. And we definitely don't fit in.”
“Well, where are we supposed to hide?” Josh hissed desperately. Phoebe glanced around. He was right. There was nothing in this long, narrow hallway but sandstone walls and the single window they'd just been peeking through. Phoebe spun around desperately, then shrugged and dropped into a kung-fu ready stance.
“If there's nowhere to flee,” she whispered to Josh, “gotta fight.”
“What?!” Josh sputtered. “Phoebe Halliwell, boxing? What happened to the party girl I used to know?”
The past three years of Wiccan butt-kicking flashed through Phoebe's mind.
“A lot's happened since we broke up,” she said to him dryly. Then she squatted and braced herself as the shadowy figure moving down the hallway came into view. As he stepped into the sunlight coming through the window, Phoebe gasped again.
If she'd needed proof that she and Josh were strangers in a strange land, here it was. The man, clearly a servant, was wearing a rough, vanilla-colored tunic tied at the waist with something that looked like woven brown hair. His own hair was black and curly, cascading down his back. In his rough hands, he held a reed basket filled with indigo cloth. Through his smiling lips Phoebe could see several missing teeth. And then an aroma—the definite scent of a man living in a predeodorant world—hit her hard.
Then she did a double take.
He's smiling, she thought. He's looking straight at me and smiling like he's in the middle of a daydream. Or maybe he's trying to psyche me out. Maybe this is some sort of ancient Egyptian fighting tactic. A zen thing. Or a pre-zen thing.
Well, if that's the case, I better take the first strike, Phoebe mused.
She balled up her fist, reared back, and threw a hard right hook at the guy's jaw.
“Whoa!” she screeched as she spun out of control. Losing her balance, she tumbled to the floor with a loud splat. She gaped at the servant's back as he continued to stroll down the hallway. Then she stared up at Josh who was biting his lip to keep from bursting out laughing.
“Nice shot, Phoebs,” he said. “Like I said, I never thought you were the Mohammad Ali type.”
“Hel-lo!” she said, lurching to her feet. “I connected. That is, I would have connected if his jaw hadn't passed right through my hand.”
“Okay, now what are you talking about?”
“I'm talking about us not being exactly solid,” Phoebe said. “Think about it, Josh. It's hundreds of years in the past. Which means, technically, we haven't been born yet.”
“Are you saying we're ghosts?” Josh said, his eyes bulging.
“Or . . . preghosts,” Phoebe said with a shrug. “After all, ghosts are usually dead, right? We can't be dead because we haven't yet lived.”
Josh threw up his hands and collapsed against the stone wall.
“You could have fooled me, Phoebe,” he said. “I mean, my memories of you dumping me a few years ago are pretty vivid.”
“Oh, what an opportune time to bring that up,” Phoebe sputtered. She began stalking down the hallway toward the doorway that the servant had entered. “Josh, I only dumped you because you went all cold and fishy on me. With no explanation, I might add.”
As Josh struggled to keep up with her, Phoebe plowed through the doorway and burst into a large room. It looked like a banquet hall of some sort. It was lined with Italian-looking columns and the floor was inlaid with gold and lapis. It was beautiful!
“This must be a palace of some kind,” Phoebe breathed, skidding to a stop.
“Wow,” Josh blurted, almost knocking into her as Phoebe stopped in her tracks.
For one lovely instant, Phoebe had forgotten Josh was there. Now she gave him a baleful glare.
“There's a stairwell,” she said, pointing to a majestic staircase on the opposite side of the hall. “Maybe that'll lead us out of here.”
Josh hurried behind her as she descended the steps, gazing around for some more clues that might help them get back to her time. But she saw nothing.
When they reached the landing, the stairwell split into two. Phoebe shrugged and turned left, descending more steps. These were less majestic and more functional—encased in a low, clammy, stone tunnel.
“Another tunnel,” she muttered. “Just my luck.”
She and Josh went down, down, down. The air got darker and murkier. Oil torches flamed along the walls, staining the ceiling black and filling the air with icky, peaty smoke.
“Okay, this is clearly wrong,” Phoebe said, biting her lip. She turned to Josh. She hated to rely on him but, well, he was all she had.
“Do you think we should turn back?” she asked.
“Or we could go toward the light down there,” Josh said, pointing over Phoebe's shoulder. She turned and was surprised to see the tunnel culminate in a brightly lit, open room. There were voices murmuring inside and then, a piercing scream.
Phoebe started and headed toward the room.
I sure hope we're invisible to everyone here, she thought as she cautiously slipped inside the doorway.
Despite herself, she gasped out loud. But none of the people in the room—and there were several—turned to look at them. She and Josh were truly ghosts.
And it looked like the woman in the center of the room was about to become one too.
“Who are these people?” Josh blurted.
“Torturers,” Phoebe said grimly.
The room, clearly an underground dungeon, was littered with devices made for pain. Phoebe saw a deep tub of water with a wide noose hanging above it. Next to that was a set of stocks, with holes cut in a slab of wood to immobilize a person's head and hands.
And in the middle of the dungeon was a giant spiked wheel. A beautiful woman with black hair and a sweaty, pale forehead was stretched onto the wheel. Her wrists, as well as her ankles, were tied with a leather thong. And two burly men with bare chests and Roman skirts were slowly tightening the leather straps. With each twist of the leather, the spikes dug deeper into the woman's flesh. Spots of blood stained her long, simple dress. Other men stood nearby. One held a whip. Another had a small mallet.
I don't even want to know what that's for, Phoebe thought, cringing at the woman's p
ain. She was clearly in agony. But she didn't seem weakened or defeated. In fact she was quite the feisty torture victim.
She screamed a single word—in an ancient language that Phoebe didn't understand—at the ceiling. Then she shook her head defiantly.
“What is she refusing?” Phoebe whispered to Josh.
A deep voice spoke in the same unintelligible language. Phoebe looked up from the poor woman's writhing body to see a man step from behind the thick, wooden post of a gallows. He was a paunchy-gutted brute with a squashed nose and long hair that hung in greasy strings down his back. But he was clearly the noblest man in the room. His tunic was made of white silk edged in gold. His sandals snaked up his thick calves. And on his head, he wore a thin gold wreath.
“He must be a king or something,” Josh said.
“What does he want from her?” Phoebe wondered.
“Catherine,” the man intoned.
“Catherine!” Phoebe whispered. “Did you hear that?”
The man thumped his heart with his fist and made his demand again. Then he took a gold ring from a pocket in his tunic and shoved it roughly onto her left ring finger.
“Oh,” Phoebe said dryly, as she realized what the king was demanding. “Nice way to propose marriage!”
The woman—Catherine—gritted her teeth and stared defiantly at the man.
He squinted at her. Her silence was clearly a refusal. The king stared at her and spat on the floor. Then he jerked his head in a brusque nod.
Each of the servants gave their leather straps another violent twist.
“Arrrrgggh!” the woman wailed. Her screams were so loud that Phoebe covered her ears with her hands and shuddered. When Catherine's pain subsided into shuddering sobs, Phoebe looked up at Josh.
“And I thought I was afraid of commitment,” she joked weakly. “What have we fallen into, Josh? And how are we going to get away from this awful place?”
chapter
7
When Paige and Piper finally got back to the Manor, it was in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Leo and Cole had tied the writhing Stuart to a chair in the attic. And their hands were full.
“Thank goodness you're home,” Leo said as the sisters bounded into the attic. “The guy kept winging out his claws and slicing through the rope we used to tie him up. Finally Cole and I had to resort to bars.”
“You're handy around the house, Leo, I must admit,” Piper said, raising her eyebrows at the metal rods coiled around Stuart's torso. “I wonder if there's a quiz that will give you extra points for that!”
While Leo rolled his eyes, the oblivious Stuart spotted Paige and Piper. His eyes went glassy.
“Paige,” he said. “I'm so happy to see you again. God, you're even more gorgeous than you were when we went out—”
“Save it,” Paige said, rolling her eyes and taunting Stuart. “I know what you're after. And you'll never get it. Cross my heart.”
She made an X over her heart with her fingertip.
“AARRRRGGGH!” Stuart screamed, writhing so hard that the bars holding him down left bloody scratches on his arms. “Let me go. You will be sorry, should you not. You have no idea who you are dealing with.”
“Oh, please,” Paige said, shaking her head and turning to Piper. “These guys are like a broken record.”
“‘Broken’ being the operative word,” Piper spat. She planted herself in front of Stuart and bent over, thrusting her face into his. “That's what you're going to be unless you start talking.”
She thumped lightly on Stuart's head with her knuckles.
“If you don't tell us what the deal is here, and what's happened to our sister,” Piper said, “believe me, you're the one who's going to be sorry.”
“You will be sorry,” Stuart intoned. “Sorrier than the rest, even. You . . . you will be sorry.”
Piper gazed deeper into Stuart's eyes and then recoiled. This guy was AWOL. His pupils were pinpricks. His voice was monotone. He was just a vessel for some implanted evil, which meant he was no help to them.
“Book of Shadows,” she barked, straightening up and turning to Paige, Cole, and Leo. “I think this guy's a dead end. We have to figure out how to get Phoebe back ourselves.”
“But first you have to explain to us what happened!” Cole sputtered. “Where is Phoebe?”
Paige turned to the guys and told them all about what had happened at Josh's apartment as Piper ran to the antique, Victorian lectern, where they kept the huge Book of Shadows. It wasn't until she began flipping through its thick pages that she was aware of her breathing. She was panting in short gasps. She could feel the blood roaring in her head, blocking out the sound of Paige's voice and Cole's angry, frustrated response. She was panicking, she knew it. But she couldn't help it. This was her darkest fear. After Prue's death, the thought of Phoebe in some unknown, perhaps dangerous, place was unbearable.
Piper started as she felt a warm, strong hand clasp her shoulder. She turned and locked eyes with her husband as he wrapped his arms around her.
“Piper,” he whispered. “It's going to be okay. We'll get her back.”
Piper bit her lip and nodded, allowing herself to sink into Leo's arms for a moment. Then she turned back to the Book and looked up at the ceiling. Or rather, she gazed up at the heavenly beings that she knew were watching from above it.
“Okay, girls,” she said, imagining her mother, Grams, maybe even Prue, gazing down at her from that nebulous place where departed witches reside. “I'm going to need a little help here. Phoebe's in some other dimension, and we have to get her back—”
Before Piper could finish her sentence, the Book slammed open. The pages began to flip with a frantic whirring noise. Then, abruptly, they stopped. Piper found herself blinking down at a spell.
“To rescue a wytch from points unknown,” read the ancient spell, “there must be a portal from one dimension to the next. Portals open at the exact moment of sunset or dawn; at midnight on a full moon; and at the first harvesting of millet or barley.”
“Okay, millet fields are in pretty short supply in these parts,” Paige said, peeking over Piper's shoulder. “And we've just missed dawn. And the next full moon is, like, nine days away.”
Piper felt despair begin to seep into her mind. But she shook it away and turned to the group.
“Okay, Leo, you go to the Elders and see if they have some portal loophole,” she said. Immediately Leo closed his eyes and disappeared in a storm of white lights.
“Paige,” Piper said, glancing back at the Book of Shadows, “it says we need to burn some herbs and stuff while we say the spell that will bring Phoebe and Josh back. Can you go to the kitchen and grab them? We need arrowroot, sage, suet, mustard seed, and . . . uh, millet. And a few other items. Take a look.”
Paige quickly jotted down the ingredients and hurried out of the attic.
Cole stood in the middle of the room, his fists clenched and his back rigid. Piper looked at him sympathetically. As helpless as she felt, she knew Cole must have felt much worse. Ever since Phoebe had used a potion during a life-and-death moment to take away Cole's demonic powers, Cole had been struggling. He hated not being able to use magic to help the witches fight off evil.
And Piper knew it must've been eating him up inside that he couldn't save Phoebe himself.
“What can I do?” he said to Piper through gritted teeth.
Piper searched her mind for a bone to throw to Cole. But the truth was, he was helpless. She shrugged.
“Can you copy down the spell from the Book of Shadows?” she offered meekly. She saw Cole's shoulders sag.
“Thanks for the busy work, sis,” he said. “I know what you're saying. There's nothing I can do.”
“I'm sorry,” Piper choked.
“I know,” Cole said, locking eyes with her. “Me too.”
Piper had to look away and bite her lip. She and Cole were in the same spot—terrified of losing Phoebe. And if they failed to bring her back, they'd be eq
ually devastated.
“You'll be sorry,” said a thick voice from across the attic. “You'll be sorrier, even than the rest of them. You'll be sorry . . .”
Piper squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her ears, trying to block out Stuart's demented rant. When, a moment later, she opened her eyes, Cole had bounded across the room. He was looming over Stuart, glaring at him menacingly.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “If you want to live you'll tell me now.”
“Sorry . . .” Stuart said, his head bobbing up and down. “Sorrier even . . .”
“Quiet,” Cole roared. He lashed out at Stuart, backhanding him across the face. Stuart's head snapped to the side and a tiny gash opened on his cheek. But he barely seemed to notice. He just gazed back up at Cole with those shiny, mad eyes and hissed, “Sorry . . . sorry . . . sorry.”
“Cole,” Piper cried. “Leave him. He's crazy. He doesn't know anything. And he's an innocent.”
“Innocent,” Cole blurted. “I don't think so. Somewhere in there lurks a demon. That demon has kidnapped my fiancée. And he's gonna talk!”
As he said this, he gave Stuart another backhanded blow.
“Ah!” Stuart cried. A gob of spit and blood flew from his mouth as Cole's fist connected with his face. “You'd best let me go. You'll be—”
“Sorry?” Cole countered. “Well, I'm willing to take that risk.”
He gave Stuart another belt. And another.
“Cole, no!” Piper screamed.
At that moment Paige returned to the attic. She carried a metal bowl brimming with mossy green herbs and smelly powders.
“I've got it,” she said. “Now wha-AHHHH!”
She was staring at Cole who was pummeling Stuart with mounting anger. Piper followed Paige's gaze and gasped.
A familiar silver rivulet was oozing out of Stuart's ear.
“Cole,” Piper screamed. “Stop!”
But there was no stopping Cole. His rage was building with every blow.
“Who's”—slap—”sorry”—thud—”now?” he grunted between blows.
As the silver goo emerging from Stuart's head turned into a gush and the familiar tunnel began to form in the middle of the attic, Paige and Piper suddenly looked at each other.
Date with Death Page 7