by Paul Ruditis
“We already know they won’t freeze. Maybe they can explode.” Piper stepped out from behind the wall and threw up her hands. She jumped back beside Paige a second later as lightning shot in her direction
“Nope,” Piper said between heaving breaths. “They don’t explode.”
The onslaught continued as Prue’s second wall continued to buckle from the power of the lightning. “I’m losing it!” Prue warned.
A blue glow enveloped the sisters as Paige’s orb shield formed around them. “Let it go! I’ve got us!”
As the second wall exploded, Phoebe thought she heard the familiar strains of a pop tune under the noise. Phoebe reflexively pulled out her phone. Coop was calling.
“Now?” Prue said. “This isn’t really the time.”
“Sorry.” Phoebe slipped it back into her pocket.
The sisters stood behind Paige’s shield, facing down the gorgons. All three sets of gorgon eyes were glowing, but the shield protected the Warren Witches from the magic.
“She’s more powerful than we thought,” Piper said.
“I thought they weren’t supposed to be witches anymore,” Paige said. “Wasn’t that part of the curse?”
“Side effect of tapping into our magic?” Piper theorized. “They might be getting that from us.”
Euryale waved a hand and the blue of the orb shield faded to clear before popping like a bubble. Without pausing, Paige grabbed onto all three of her sisters and orbed them out to the balcony behind them. “She changed my shield!” Paige said in a whisper so the gorgons didn’t know where they’d gone. “How did she alter my magic? I didn’t even know that could happen.”
“It has to be the connection,” Piper said. “There’s no telling how powerful they’ve become.”
Phoebe leaned over toward the glass door between the balcony and the living room. She took a peek, careful not to be seen. Euryale was redecorating, making all the furniture in the room melt while she searched for them. As if they would have hidden behind the sofa table. Then again, there were safer places to be than the balcony overlooking the desert sand in the middle of nowhere. The French Riviera came to mind.
Prue slipped in beside Phoebe to take a look as well. “If they’re using our magic to make them stronger, maybe we can use that against them. Overload them.”
“Give them more power?” Phoebe asked as they both leaned back. “I don’t know about that plan.”
“No,” Prue said. “I think it will work.”
“Okay, then,” Piper said as she stepped toward the glass doors. “Let’s do this!” If she couldn’t work her magic on the gorgons, it was possible she could affect the magical environment they were in. With her hands up, Piper tapped into the magic of the Nexus and attacked it like she would a demon, blowing open the doors in a shower of metal and glass that flew toward the gorgons.
“Man, she knows how to make an entrance,” Paige said as she followed her sister into the room.
Phoebe watched as Prue went next. She wasn’t crazy about this plan, but it was the best they could come up with at the moment. She entered last to see that the room was completely bare. The very air was crackling with Medusa’s lighting as Stheno’s cold winds whipped through the air. Phoebe had to dive out of the way of the debris from the window as it blew out to the balcony, disappearing into nothingness as it flew beyond the perimeter of Prue’s castle.
Lightning flared as Prue was suddenly at the center of a maelstrom. The walls and floor shifted and shook, throwing Stheno and Euryale to the ground. But Medusa remained standing, lightning crackling around her.
“Prue?” Piper asked, a note of warning in her voice.
“I got this!” Prue said as the entire castle rumbled and shook.
“Lightning!” Paige screamed as a bolt shot right toward Prue. It wasn’t a warning. She used the power of her orbs to pull the electricity out of the air, sending it harmlessly into the desert.
“Don’t stop, Medusa!” Stheno screamed as she pulled herself off the ground. “Destroy them, like Athena tried to destroy us.”
Medusa’s eyes went right to Paige, who did look away this time. “I’m not Athena!”
“There is a passing resemblance,” Euryale noted.
“It doesn’t matter who she is now!” Stheno shouted over the wind and rumbling of the building. “She was the Goddess of War once. She could be again. Kill her and we can control their magic. Then we can remake the world in our image. We can take control.”
“If it’s magic you want—” Prue raised her hands “—it’s magic you’ll get.”
The castle shook harder as Prue made the walls shift. The room darkened as the lights dimmed around them. Vines crawled down the walls and dropped from the ceiling, moving for the gorgons with the speed of Medusa’s lightning.
Euryale jumped in front of her sisters, waving her hands in every direction. The vines coming for them shifted into gauzy strips of fabric before disappearing.
Prue countered, opening up the floor beneath the gorgons, dropping them into the darkness beneath. They were back a moment later, rising up on a platform of ice growing from Stheno’s hands.
Prue was relentless, using the very building against them. Three of the four walls around the gorgons compacted into a box, with a fourth wall magically appearing and slamming them into a small, windowless prison. For a brief moment, there was silence. The winds had stopped. The building was still.
In the silence, Phoebe could both hear and feel her phone as it vibrated in her pocket. A text was coming in. Now? Was it Coop again or someone else? If it was Coop, it might be important. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the danger, but she had to know. Phoebe quickly slipped the phone out for a glimpse.
It was Coop. And the text provided everything she needed.
Before she could share the news with her sisters, the small prison began to tremble. Thunder and lightning burst from the box as it exploded, sending pieces of wall in every direction. Phoebe and her sister dropped to the floor to avoid the debris.
“This isn’t working.” Paige spoke over the sound of the icy winds that Stheno was forming once again. Phoebe could barely hear her. They’d gotten separated in the explosion. Phoebe was closer to the gorgons than she was to her sisters. She couldn’t let the enemy know what she’d learned. Not yet, anyway.
“They’re matching me power for power,” Prue said. “How is that possible? We’re on the Nexus.”
“So are they,” Piper said. “As long as they’re here, they might be as strong as us. Overloading them might not work.”
“Now she tells me,” Prue said.
Medusa was approaching Paige, eyes glowing with rage.
“Yes, sister!” Stheno shouted behind her. “Do what you were made to do!”
Medusa’s step faltered almost imperceptibly. Phoebe would have missed it, had she not been looking right at the floor beneath the gorgon’s feet at the time. She took the risk and raised her eyes to Medusa’s face. Behind her glowing rage, there seemed to be a slight bit of confusion. And maybe some hesitation.
It might be enough.
Phoebe was back on her feet, moving with speed. She held up her hands, coming up with her most insane plan on the fly. She’d never used her power like this before, but if there really was a connection between them, it might just work.
“Medusa!” Stheno called out a warning as Phoebe approached, but it was too late. She already had her hands around the gorgon’s head. At this proximity, she could hear the hissing snakes hidden beneath Medusa’s dark hair.
“It’s okay, little snakies,” Phoebe said. “I’m not planning to kill her. Just make her see.”
Phoebe focused her mind on Paige, pulling images from the past to fill her own mind, hoping to share them with Medusa. She remembered some of her sister’s most heroic deeds and the work of the Charmed O
nes as well. Phoebe filled her mind with images of some of their greatest battles, and all the Innocents they’d protected—both during their time with Paige, and the early days with Prue. Then she pulled up her most recent images with all four sisters working together. If that didn’t convince Medusa they were on the side of good, then nothing would.
Lighting danced around the two of them, but it wasn’t attacking. If anything, it was keeping Medusa’s own sisters at bay. The glow in Medusa’s eyes dimmed, but still not enough to invite anyone to look directly at her.
“I get premonitions,” Phoebe said into Medusa’s ear. “I can see the future and the past. I don’t need to use my abilities to know that you’ve been badly hurt. What happened to you was horrible. But it wasn’t my sister’s fault. She’s one of the good ones. We all are. Just take these images to see what we have done. We didn’t hurt you. The people frozen here in stone aren’t to blame either.”
“Everyone is to blame!” Stheno called out through the crackles of lightning. “Everyone who didn’t act to stop it. The people who shared your story over the centuries, turning you into the monster.”
“Yeah,” Phoebe agreed as the lightning diminished. “That sucks too. But acting like a monster isn’t the best way to prove them wrong.”
“But it’s a good way to make them listen,” Euryale added. “Stheno was right. It’s the really horrible people that get all the press these days.”
The glow left Medusa’s eyes as they filled with even more confusion. Now, Phoebe was confident enough to look right at the gorgon. Even if Medusa tried to activate her magic, Phoebe felt secure that she could counter it. The feeling wasn’t logical, but it made sense to her. The lightning was completely gone. The castle was still. Prue had stopped her attack as well.
“Your sister’s right,” Phoebe said, calmly, as if they were having a simple conversation. “It does seem that way. If we hadn’t been working to stop you the world would know about you by now. They would think of you as monsters.”
“But they would have heard us,” Stheno insisted. Her voice was lower, but no less intense. “They would have feared us.”
“But not respected you,” Phoebe said.
“But they would have listened,” Stheno insisted. “And that was the point.”
“Yes. It was.” Phoebe nodded and smiled. Stheno had given her the exact opening she needed. “It was all about getting your message out, wasn’t it? We noticed the connection between your victims. People who used their own mortal powers to oppress others. To hurt womankind. We saw what you were doing.”
“And the world would have seen it too, if you hadn’t stopped us,” Stheno added.
“Yes, they would have,” Phoebe replied, speaking directly to Medusa. “But at what cost? Making yourselves into the monsters people have believed you were for thousands of years. Monsters on the outside as well as the inside.”
“We’re not monsters,” Medusa said in a whisper.
Phoebe took a step forward. “I don’t think you are. I don’t think your sisters are. I think the anger you all feel is justified. I understand how it grew over time with your sisters. I get how your early death kept you from processing it all properly. But that doesn’t justify turning people to stone. Making other people afraid. And it certainly is no excuse for what your sister did to us.”
“Did you to?” Medusa glanced back to Stheno.
Phoebe fought the smile forming at her lips. It was just as she suspected. Medusa didn’t know. “I just got a message from my husband,” Phoebe said. “You may not know this, but some really bad things have been happening to us lately. My sister and I… our careers were put in jeopardy. Innocents were hurt.”
“We needed a distraction,” Stheno explained, unprompted. There was no regret in her tone. “We did what we had to do.”
“Including partnering with someone who did exactly the thing you claim to loathe,” Phoebe said. “A man who used his own powers to force a woman to love him. And in the process he destroyed her life.”
Phoebe shared the story of Dafydd and his twisted love, pointing out that Stheno hadn’t seen fit to turn him to stone. She’d embraced his powers and used them for her purposes. By the time Phoebe finished, the confusion was gone from Medusa’s eyes. So was the rage. All that seemed to be left was regret.
Medusa turned to her sisters, but Stheno knew enough not to speak.
The same could not be said for Euryale. “Like we said, it’s the horrible people that get all the press these days.”
It was over in a flash. One moment Stheno and Euryale were standing there in the flesh and the next they were stone. There wasn’t even time for the shock to register in their eyes.
Epilogue
Phoebe finished giving her column one last review before sending it off to Elise. It was the second day in a row that she’d come in right under deadline, but recent events justified another piece to address the PR issue of her couples breaking up. Not that she could explain it any more today than she could the day before. But she put her tablet down on the nightstand feeling optimistic that the crisis had been averted. Mika could focus on the next one. Hopefully in a section of the newspaper far from Ask Phoebe.
The good news was that the full Cupid force was in on the case, working to undo the damage Dafydd had created with the Eros Ring. Without his magical influence, all the couples that had broken up would have the chance for reconciliation. It wouldn’t be easy. Things had been said and done that could not be easily undone. But with the guiding hands of some of the best in the business, Phoebe was sure most, if not all, of the couples would be back together soon. Though she did worry for the poor movers who were going to have to get Bri back into her house on that hill.
“That was not fun,” her harried husband said as he came into the room and collapsed on the bed, making it shake violently. “As soon as I got Parker to sleep, P.J. wanted a glass of water. When I got back with the water, Parker was crying because… I still haven’t figured it out, actually. And that just set off a chain of events that I can’t even begin to explain. How do those two small bodies get packed with so much energy?”
Phoebe kissed her husband as he climbed up beside her. “I’ll put them to bed tomorrow night. You’ve certainly earned your keep today. Thanks for all your help with the other thing too.”
“It was the least I could do,” Coop said as he snuggled in beside her. “Dafydd’s actions weren’t my fault, but they were my responsibility.”
“Just like Medusa and her sisters,” Phoebe said. “Now that she’s not under their influence, I think she’ll be able to get the help she needs. The Elders are going to look after her for a while. And I’ll be checking in with the Elders to make sure she’s getting the help that she needs from them since they were kind of the ones that started all this in the first place.”
“And her sisters?”
“They’re going to stay statues for a while,” Phoebe said. “Until Medusa can figure out how to help them as well. Then she’ll turn them back like she did all the other people.”
“Elise is still going with a viral marketing campaign in the paper?” Coop sounded slightly disappointed by the lie.
“I know,” Phoebe said. “She’s not crazy about it either, but she can’t really report the truth. That’s the story her reporter submitted so that’s what she accepted. A series of viral marketing campaigns meant to get people talking. Since none of the people who turned to stone had any clue what happened to them, they all went along with it so they didn’t look foolish. It did kind of give them some publicity. What that publicity accomplished, I don’t know, but people are talking.”
“Not about what Stheno wanted,” Coop said.
“Medusa’s going to see to it they start,” Phoebe said. “The thing about her sisters living so long is they’ve amassed quite a fortune of their own. Medusa’s going to try to put some of that
to good use. Using mortal means to get a message of empowerment out.”
“At least something good will come out of all this,” Coop said.
“I’m still not sure how the gorgons could access our power,” Phoebe said. “It’s not like the Warren line goes back that far. Or maybe it does.”
“Ancient magic is all connected to what we have today,” Coop said. “Time isn’t so linear when it comes to those things.”
“Still, I wonder if somewhere back through history we might be related. Like Medusa’s a way, way distant cousin or something.”
“Go back far enough and I think most of us are related somehow,” Coop said.
“It could be possible I have a small amount of Greek in me.”
Coop smiled flirtatiously. “I do find Greek women sexy.”
“You’re a Cupid. You find all women sexy.”
“All people, really,” Coop said. “Cupids are very open.”
Phoebe ran her fingers up his arm. “You’re very loving.”
“Cole was a big help today too.”
Phoebe stopped what she was doing and pulled away from him slightly. “A Cupid should be better at setting the mood.”
Coop laughed, lightly. “Sorry. Still got a lot on my mind. I’ve never been crazy about Cole’s way of doing things, but love can’t heal everything I guess. I’m not sure what Dafydd’s punishment will be, but a tribunal has been called to decide it.”
Phoebe nodded. “Hard to punish someone who has been living in a self-created punishment for decades.”
“True.”
Phoebe moved closer to her husband again, putting her arm around his chest. “I love you, you know?”
