“Got a hint?” Phoebe pleaded.
“Tell me, Paige.” Sh’tara’s eyes glinted with a wild mania as she glared into Paige’s eyes, piercing the barriers into her thoughts.
“Get out! Stop!” Paige screamed, and slapped at her head, frantically trying to dislodge Sh’tara’s mental probe. The violation of her mind felt as if her brain were being stabbed with a thousand heated pins. Then it was gone.
“Look at me, Phoebe!” Sh’tara commanded.
Dazed and numb, Paige looked up as Phoebe defiantly met Sh’tara’s probing glare.
“What?” Phoebe suddenly clamped her hands to the sides of her face and fell to her knees as the sorceress invaded her thoughts.
Paige realized then that Sh’tara accessed their minds through eye contact. Before she could sound a warning, Piper challenged Sh’tara.
“Leave her alone!” Piper lunged to shove Sh’tara. She reeled backward when the sorceress spun and captured her gaze.
Tov’reh paused to watch Piper writhe under Sh’tara’s assault. His hesitation bought a few extra seconds before he, too, reclaimed his old power. It wasn’t much time, but Paige used the precious interlude to evaluate the dire situation.
Paige had no doubt that Tov’reh’s power to alter the physical state of things would be just as foreboding as Ce’kahn’s storm and Sh’tara’s ability to force others to her will. She sensed there was a way to beat them, but the elusive solution skittered around her thoughts like a playful puppy that didn’t want to be caught just yet.
“They are powerless.” Sh’tara’s gravelly voice dripped with venomous disdain as she reported her findings to Ce’kahn and Tov’reh. “Except for a warning that helped them identify us, the witches found nothing in their Book of Shadows to use against us. There is no spell or charm or potion that can vanquish us.”
“Did Shen’arch arrange that, too?” Piper’s reddened eyes blazed through a sheen of tears.
If we had found something useful in The Book of Shadows, Paige realized, Sh’tara would now know!
Something Phoebe had said earlier came rushing back: “What we don’t know can’t hurt us.” Since Sh’tara couldn’t learn what they didn’t know, ignorance had protected them from the evil mind-reader.
The deduction was significant, but Paige couldn’t consult with Piper without clueing in the Dor’chacht.
“Who are these people?” Phoebe asked, mystified.
“We are your worst nightmare,” Ce’kahn said.
“Don’t think so,” Phoebe quipped. “Although come to think of it, I’m not a big fan of snakes.”
“Snakes work for me.” Kevin took Phoebe’s insult as his cue to act. Dropping his sword, he gripped the staff in two hands and placed the silver end against his forehead.
Paige succumbed to sudden fatigue and closed her eyes, hoping that instant inspiration would strike in the nick of time.
“Guh-sheen toh dak!” The incantation that completed Kevin’s conversion into Tov’reh echoed off the cliffs that formed the valley walls.
Paige forced her eyes open as spidery red crackles of magic erupted from the design engraved in the silver end of Tov’reh’s staff. Then, suddenly, something Piper said earlier came rushing back: “What goes into a Dor’chacht artifact must have a way out again, right?”
If the Dor’chacht can get their powers back out, Paige thought, then there must be a way to retrieve ours, too.
Ce’kahn lifted her arms as though to embrace the sky. “Dark forces of the air and night empowered, this ancient enemy to fell three thousand years agone this hour!”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and fingers of lightning traced erratic paths across the purplish expanse.
Although inspiration continued to elude her, Paige had another startling insight: She and her sisters always seemed to have the tools—potions, spells, charms, whatever—they needed to succeed when they needed them. It didn’t make sense that, in this major conflict between magical clans with ultimate good or evil in the mortal world at stake, they would be denied the means to win.
“Your storm confounded and confused the mightiest magics of the old Sol’agath, Ce’kahn, but it’s wasted on these feeble modern minds.” Sh’tara’s pointed gaze turned toward Paige.
Don’t look into her eyes! Paige concentrated on a jagged peak on the dark horizon.
“Who are you calling feeble?” Phoebe demanded.
“You will be when I’m through with you,” Sh’tara hissed. “Completely and irrevocably mindless.”
“That’s fine by me,” Piper countered. “If we’re feebleminded, we won’t be terrified. So please, Sh’tara, do us a huge favor and take our free will and our intelligence. Now would be good.”
It took a second, but then Paige realized that Piper was gambling on a “briar patch” strategy to trick Sh’tara into leaving their minds alone. In an old folktale, a crafty rabbit had begged a fox not to throw him into the briar patch. Unable to resist hurting the rabbit as much as possible, the fox had thrown him into the briar patch, where the rabbit had promptly escaped.
“I don’t think so,” Sh’tara said, falling for the ploy that matched wit against magic. “I’d rather torment you as long as possible.”
“As would I.” Tov’reh breathed deeply as the last crimson flickers of magic seeped into his pores. “Beginning with snakes.”
“Big, hungry snakes.” Ce’kahn pointed at a huge tree. Lightning arrowed downward from a rip in the black clouds that streaked the sky. The bolt hit the base of the tree, felling the timber in a cascade of exploding sparks.
Safe from Sh’tara’s mind probes for the moment, Paige desperately tried to piece together the information she was certain she had. As though knowing the immediate danger was passed, her subconscious mind revealed other hints she had said, read, or heard and suppressed.
“The only reference I saw about disputes between ancient clans mentions ‘reversal,’ but that’s all.”
Stricken with another surge of intense weariness, Paige swayed. Piper’s hand closed on her arm to keep her from keeling over.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Phoebe said.
“Especially if you have a phobia about snakes,” Piper squealed.
“…the champions of virtue must defend, the light of ages past or be forsaken…”
Paige forced her eyes open. Threatened by the storm roiling overhead and Sh’tara’s burning brain probes, she had trouble concentrating on the clues she had finally isolated in her mind: “…what goes in must come out, reversal, defend the light of ages past…” All of it meant something.
“Serpent!” Tov’reh cast the command at the downed tree. The barren branches along the trunk shriveled as the tree morphed into a giant bluish green snake. The reptile slithered directly toward Stanley, who had curled into a fetal ball behind the boulder.
“I think it wants a snack.” Ce’kahn waved an arm and a wisp of hurricane-force wind blasted the boulder into a nearby ravine.
The old man curled into a tighter ball, helpless to defend himself.
“Not gonna happen.” Paige cast out her hand as the huge reptile opened its fanged mouth to devour Stanley. “Snake!”
“Paige! No!” Piper yelled a warning and shot her hands out to slow the creature.
Paige planted her feet as the serpent’s movements slowed. Since her diminished orb took precious seconds to engage, the slow-motion effect of Piper’s freeze saved Stanley from a horrendous death. When the massive reptile finally dissolved into millions of orb sparkles, she didn’t know if it would disintegrate in transit or materialize to swallow her whole. She just knew she had to protect Stanley.
As the snake’s glistening fangs started to reform before her, Paige suddenly realized that the old man was the “light of ages past” the passage in The Book of Shadows meant the Charmed Ones to defend.
Stanley Addison’s gentle, trusting soul was the light of his past and symbolic of all the innocents the descendants of the Sol’agath
clan had protected over the past three thousand years.
Chapter
11
Phoebe watched as Paige turned the snake into a giant sparkler. She loathed reptiles, but this monster was worse than anything she had imagined in childhood dreams. In fact, for a moment she had thought she was dreaming!
Piper held her hands out, preparing to freeze the snake when it materialized. “Just try to eat my sister, snake!”
“What sister?” Phoebe shuddered and stepped back to pick up a branch that had broken off the tree before it became a voracious viper. She was having a hard time keeping track of the bizarre scenario, but she was certain of one thing: If the fanged monster tried to swallow her, she wasn’t going down its throat without a fight.
“That sister!” Piper pointed at Paige, then sagged. “Never mind.”
Relieved but confused, Phoebe gripped the branch in the middle like a fighting staff, which felt right. Taking a deep breath, she set her jaw. Paige had deliberately drawn the snake away from an old guy hiding behind a rock. The least she could do was help fight it off.
“You’re a fool, witch!” The man called Kevin or Tov’reh, Phoebe wasn’t sure which, laughed when the snake began to re-form in front of Paige.
Phoebe held her position when Piper snapped her hands forward to slow the sparkling serpent and the three people dressed like extras in Conan the Barbarian.
“Why did you do that?” Paige looked annoyed. “The snake will disintegrate before it finishes the orb!”
Before Piper could answer, the barbarians and the snake resumed normal speed.
“You’re really making me angry now, Piper!” The savage woman called Sh’tara bared her teeth.
“Like I care?” Piper threw another slow-mo whammy on the three grungy guys and the still sparkling snake.
“I think I know how to get our powers back,” Paige said quickly, trying to fit as much discussion as possible into a few seconds. “Just don’t look Sh’tara in the eye. That’s how she gets into your mind.”
“Are you sure?” Piper asked.
“Positive. Each of us locked gazes with her the last time.” Paige cringed when the snake sped up again.
Suddenly the hovering serpent changed from a million particles of light into a million splinters of wood. When it exploded, it had turned back into a tree.
“No!” Tov’reh cried out.
“That works,” Piper said, nodding.
“Yeah,” Phoebe said, impressed.
“Reverting to type like some people we know.” Paige glanced at the furious, fur-clad triplets and smiled with a halfhearted wave at Tov’reh. “Sorry about that.”
No, she isn’t, Phoebe thought as the tall, muscular man’s face furrowed with dark rage.
Tov’reh hefted his staff like a spear, with the ground end aimed at Paige. “You won’t be so smug when all your power is gone!”
“Piper!” Paige screamed as Tov’reh thrust the staff toward her. It slipped into slow motion mere inches from her throat.
“Okay. Now what?” Piper asked, her hands still extended after throwing the faulty freeze on the staff. “We don’t have much time.”
“I don’t need much.” Paige ducked to the side, slid the staff out of Tov’reh’s grasp, and reversed it so the ground end was pointing away from her. The sorcerer began to speed up before Paige was back in position, but Piper quickly slowed him and the women again.
“Can I bonk him?” Phoebe was getting tired of standing on the sidelines doing nothing.
“After I get my powers back.” Paige stepped in front of the staff and bent her knees, which lowered her so the engraved silver tip was opposite her forehead. “If this works.”
When the Dor’chacht resumed normal movement a second time, the woman called Ce’kahn tilted her head back. “Fire and—”
Phoebe spun abruptly and whacked Ce’kahn in the midriff with the end of the heavy branch, aborting the unfinished command.
“If what works?” Piper slowed the trio a third time so Paige could answer the question.
Ce’kahn slowly doubled over in pain and surprise.
Phoebe grinned. “Not bad.”
Paige and Piper were too preoccupied to comment.
“The passage I found about ancient clans and ‘reversal’ didn’t mean reversing how this family feud ended the last time.” Paige wrapped her fingers around the engraved silver tip of the staff. “That was just a sneaky way of letting us know we could reverse the power grab, I think.”
When Tov’reh came to in the next second, he shrieked with outrage at Piper’s audacity, unaware of the changes the witches had imposed.
Paige held on to the silver end of the staff and pressed it against her forehead. “Guh-sheen toh dak!”
When Tov’reh realized what was happening, he tried to yank the staff from Paige’s grasp. She didn’t let go, but the force of the sorcerer’s movement combined with a cosmic imperative that demanded balance in all things jabbed the ground end against his throat. He couldn’t break away when small red streaks of magic lightning crackled and sputtered out of his pores and back into the staff.
Sparkles of magic flickered off the silver end, too, but they enveloped Paige in a soft blue glow.
“What’s happening, Piper?” Phoebe hit Ce’kahn on the head with the branch when she started to straighten. The sorceress staggered backward and bumped into Sh’tara, throwing the mind-reader off balance.
“No time to explain!” Piper looked frantic. “Get Kate’s bracelet!”
“Who?” Phoebe couldn’t take her eyes off Paige.
Paige’s long dark hair billowed around her head as though every strand had been charged with static electricity. Her whole body trembled as blue magic sparkles dissolved into her translucent skin.
“I love fireworks!” The old man sat cross-legged on the ground a short distance away, clapping his hands and laughing.
“Ce’kahn!” Piper waved. “Behind you!”
Phoebe turned just as Ce’kahn caught her around the legs and threw her to the ground. She felt the air rush from her lungs when she hit, and the branch broke into pieces. Dazed and unable to catch her breath, she couldn’t roll clear when Ce’kahn straddled her.
“The bracelet!” Piper slowed Ce’kahn and zapped Sh’tara as the mind-reader regained her footing.
Disoriented, Phoebe shook her head to clear a sudden dizziness. She couldn’t breathe because a woman moving in slow-mo was sitting astride her, presumably for the purpose of holding her down. From the corner of her eye, she saw Paige jerk a wooden staff away from a blue-eyed, blond guy who was dressed like Attila the Hun.
Piper was running toward her, waving her arms. She started to shout, but another crazed woman decked out in boutique B.C. grabbed her from behind and clamped a hand over her mouth.
An old, shoeless guy with a boyish grin watched the bizarre drama unfold with disturbing calm. He had to be the innocent in whatever supernatural catastrophe the Charmed Ones had fallen into.
Phoebe had no idea why she was lying on her back fighting cave people under a purple sky. Until someone had time to explain, there was only one thing to do: fight.
“Get out of my face, Tov’reh!” With a majestic sweep of her arm, Paige orbed Tov’reh into a thicket of thorny briars and vines. She planted the end of a silver-tipped staff on the ground and hitched her hip to the side, striking a casual pose of triumph. “Who’s the fool?”
Phoebe’s attention was rudely snapped back to her own predicament when Piper’s slow-mo freeze wore off the frenzied woman sitting on top of her.
“You will not escape me, Phoebe!” The woman gripped Phoebe’s throat in one hand and raised the other. “I am Ce’kahn! Send me fire!”
“The bracelet, Phoebe!” Piper yelled as she broke free of the other woman, but her words were garbled in the gusting wind. “Get her bracelet!”
“Bracelet?” Phoebe asked, and then realized the answer wouldn’t matter if she was incinerated by the fir
eball rocketing toward her from the sky.
Piper knew Phoebe had no idea what was going on or why. However, thanks to Paige’s analytical powers, she thought she knew how to get Phoebe’s powers and her memory back.
“If she isn’t burned to a crisp first,” Piper muttered with a glance at Ce’kahn’s falling fire-bomb. She snapped her hands toward it, but nothing happened. Apparently, she had used her reduced power so many times in the past several minutes, she didn’t have enough magical oomph left to slow the flaming missile.
“Fire!” Paige pointed, and orbed the blazing ball toward Sh’tara.
“Rain!” Ce’kahn countered. Instead of being seared, Sh’tara was drenched when a huge globule of water burst.
With her slow-mo freeze on the fritz, Piper had to resort to good old-fashioned nonmagical tactics. Taking heart from Paige’s ability to out-think Tov’reh, she ran toward Phoebe. “Grab her arm!”
Phoebe didn’t hesitate. Hours of working out with Cole in the Manor basement had left her in peak physical condition, with lightning-fast reflexes. She clamped onto each of Ce’kahn’s wrists, wrapped her legs around the woman’s middle, and rolled. Holding Ce’kahn’s arms in an iron grip, Phoebe planted her knee on the woman’s chest.
Piper was amazed at how effective their ordinary human abilities were proving to be against the Dor’chacht’s powerful magic. The immobilizing effect of Phoebe’s wrestling moves was almost as good as her freeze, when it was functional.
Piper dropped to her knees beside Phoebe and reached for Ce’kahn’s bracelet arm. “Can you bend your head down without losing your grip on her?”
“No problem.” Phoebe released the bracelet arm and clamped one hand around Ce’kahn’s throat while still holding her other wrist.
Just as Piper caught Ce’kahn’s free arm in both hands, Sh’tara’s sharp fingernails dug into her shoulders. When the mind-reader tried to yank her around, Piper tightened her grip on Ce’kahn and closed her eyes. “Don’t look in this one’s eyes, Phoebe!”
Dark Vengeance Page 13