“GRRRRRRRRR!”
“Here he comes,” Piper yelled.
Phoebe could hear the giant dog lumbering up the attic stairs—snarling and huffing and lunging at her sister.
“Phoebe!” Piper screamed.
“Now!” Phoebe yelled. She pulled the lamp up just as the beast leaped out of the stairwell. The exposed wire caught it across the chest and burst into flames.
The dog’s three heads rolled in agony, and it howled with pain as the wire seared its flesh. As sparks flew off its body, the sisters scrambled out of the way.
With a few more horrible howls, the dog suddenly exploded in a fiery blast. Phoebe threw herself to the floor. When she finally looked up, the creature was gone. All she could see was a poof of acrid black smoke. Beyond it, her sisters were cowering in the corner. They stood up shakily and ran to Phoebe’s side.
“You okay?” Prue asked.
Phoebe nodded breathlessly.
“Let’s get to that camera,” Piper declared, leading the way down the attic stairs.
As they rushed through the upstairs hallway and clattered down the main staircase, Prue said, “I’m going to have to rig up a shutter release cord so we can all be in front of the lens when I take the picture. That way we’ll all be zapped at the same time.”
“You do that while I check on the sleeping beauties,” Phoebe said. She ran into the sunroom and began examining the pile of unconscious models.
“And I’ve got the spell,” Piper said, waving the piece of paper where she’d written it down.
Prue had just located the long shutter release cord in her camera bag when she heard a sound. A horrible sound.
“Ca-caw, ca-CAW!”
A chill skittered down her spine. And then she looked up.
“Piper, Phoebe!” she screamed, leaping to her feet.
Perched on top of the camera was a creature even more grotesque, if possible, than the three-headed dog. It had a woman’s head—beak-nosed, lipless, and chalky white. It had a scaly human torso, as well. But where there should have been arms were flapping wings. Instead of legs, the animal had a hawk’s talons and a long feathery tail.
“What the—” Piper blurted.
Prue didn’t stop to wonder what this creature was. Instead, she just flung her arm out, zinging it off the camera. The beast emitted a dreadful screech. But before it could crash into the wall, it began flapping its wings. And then it flew right out of Prue’s telekinetic strike! It swooped around the ceiling, screeching down at the sisters.
“Watch the models,” Prue shrieked as the creature swooped down near the sleeping forms in the sunroom. Piper rushed to protect the models, but the creature passed over them, ignoring them completely. Instead, it hissed at Piper and clawed at her, missing her eyes by an inch.
“I don’t think it’s interested in them,” Piper screamed.
“No,” Prue agreed, ducking to miss a swipe of the creature’s talons. “I think it’s safe to say this thing’s here for us.”
“I think this is a job for super-Phoebe,” Phoebe piped up from the other side of the room. Piper and Prue spun around to see their sister hovering in the air across the room from the bird-woman.
The creature let out a terrifying screech and shot through the air toward the youngest witch. Phoebe was ready with a dizzying series of airborne karate chops. The creature slapped at her with its wings, but Phoebe spun in the air, kicking them away with powerful thrusts of her feet. She swooped to avoid the creature’s flying talons and spun to duck its powerful tail.
“She’s really getting the hang of that flying thing,” Piper said to Prue.
“You know it!” Prue replied. Then she yelled to Phoebe, “Ready for me to take over?”
“On the count of three,” Phoebe yelled, swiping at the creature for all she was worth. “One . . . two . . .”
She spun around twice and punched the creature in the face as she screamed, “Three!”
The bird-woman careened into the foyer where Prue was waiting. She waved her arms at the creature, pummeling it with a powerful telekinetic thrust. Weakened and screeching, the horrible beast slammed into the wall. The blow was enough to make it explode into a cloud of feathers and ash.
Phoebe plummeted to the floor with a thud.
“Ooooh,” she groaned. “Flying’s getting easier, but landing is still tricky.”
“Let’s get to the camera before anything else pops up,” Piper said. “Phoebs, come with me over here.”
Piper and Phoebe positioned themselves in front of the camera lens while Prue rushed to attach the shutter release cord to the camera.
“This thing is so old, I hope I can get it attached,” she muttered, struggling with the camera.
“Pruuuue,” Phoebe said, eyeing the living room corner, where the air was beginning to waver and shimmer. “I think we’ve got a new visitor dropping in on us!”
“Almost there,” Prue grunted, screwing the cable onto a tiny appendage on the camera.
“Hurry,” Piper shrieked.
“Got it,” Prue announced, just as a nine-headed serpent appeared in the corner, hissing wildly.
“Say the spell,” Prue yelled as she leaped to join her sisters in front of the camera. They grabbed one another’s hands.
“For an instant may we be,” the sisters chanted, “ordinary mortals three. . . .
“Hisssssssss.
“Take us where we want to go . . .
“ The serpent began to slither across the room.
“Then back to our powers let us go!
“ Uttering the last word of the spell left them, for an instant, without their magic powers—just when a lethal snake was lunging at them.
“Now!” Phoebe and Piper screamed.
“ Prue hit the shutter button and cringed as the flashbulb exploded. Then she felt her body crumpling to the ground as her mind was pulled down a dark, swirling, roaring tunnel. She could feel her sisters’ hands in hers, which lessened her fear for an instant.
Then everything went black.
Phoebe blinked and shook her head. She was on her hands and knees, and she was sure she’d lost consciousness for a second. Glancing up quickly, she saw Prue and Piper nearby, looking as bleary as she felt.
Phoebe lurched to her feet and shivered. She was standing in a patch of oozing mud, and her filmy Grecian dress was smeared with damp sludge. Her feet sank into the ground with a sickening squelch.
“Uch,” Piper said, lifting her own dripping foot out of the muck. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Phoebe said, looking around. They were surrounded by gray, leafless, looming trees. Through the misty gloom, Phoebe thought she could see some wispy white bodies flitting in and out of the tree branches. Were they ghosts?
And in the distance, she could just make out a desiccated mansion, crumbling and overrun by vines.
“Wait a minute!” she exclaimed. “I do know where we are. Well, sort of. This is the scene from my premonition.”
With a gasp, Phoebe realized something else. She’d just realized why her premonition had felt so familiar: She was standing inside Nikos’s painting! Everything was here—the ghostly figures, the crumbling manse, the gnarled trees.
She started to tell her sisters about the painting,but something made her swallow the words back. She had no idea what all this meant, but she did know that Prue was majorly suspicious of Nikos. Knowing about his painting would only feed that suspicion.
But Phoebe felt sure that Nikos wasn’t responsible for this fix. He couldn’t be. He was so great! And sweet! And cute!
This all has to be some sort of fluke, she thought stubbornly. Maybe his painting was a trigger . . . or something. Anyway, if we don’t get out of this muck and find some clues, we’ll never know either way.
She squinted into the woods and scanned the landscape for something, anything that would point her in the right direction. Piper sloshed up next to her.
“Where on earth, or well,
wherever we are, do you think we should go?” she asked.
Phoebe shrugged, already feeling guilty for not clueing her sibs into her extra information.
“Hey,” Prue called from a few yards away. She was squinting through a thicket. “Did you see that?”
Piper and Phoebe squished over to her.
“See what?” Piper asked, following Prue’s gaze.
“I saw a flash of light,” Prue said excitedly. “Just a glimmer. Then it faded out, almost like a firefly.”
Phoebe peered through the gloom.
“Are you sure that wasn’t wishful thinking, Prue?” she said, rubbing her hands over the goose bumps on her arms. “After all, this isn’t exactly hot summer firefly weather.”
Suddenly, she saw a faint light wink through the trees.
“There it is!” she cried. “Is that the light you saw, Prue?”
“Yup,” Prue said.
“I saw it, too,” Piper said.
“Well, looks like we’ve got something to go on,” Phoebe said, plunging forward. “Let’s move!”
The sisters spent about an hour slogging through the swampy wood. Owls and bats swooped down around them, making them cringe and squeal. Their hair kept getting caught in thorny shrubs. Foul-smelling, cold muck—sap or slime or who knew what—dripped off tree branches, landing creepily on their heads and bare shoulders.
“This is the nastiest experience I’ve had since I took the P3 staff on one of those wilderness retreats,” Piper complained, feeling her tunic catch—and tear—on a prickle bush.
“Don’t forget about the time you lost your retainer in the Dumpster,” Phoebe grunted as she tiptoed through a bubbling brown stream. “That might have been a smidge nastier.”
“Come on, you guys,” Prue said, climbing over a craggy boulder. “We’re almost there. I just saw the light flash again, and it was much closer.”
After another half mile or so of their painful hike,the sisters emerged onto a sandy beach.
“Is that a lake?” Phoebe asked, squinting at a large body of water in front of them. It was enshrouded in a smelly, soupy fog.
“It’s a river,” Piper said, pointing at the sluggish current. Brackish yellow waves bubbled onto the sand, lapping their toes.
“Yuck!” Prue exclaimed, jumping backward.
“Now the big question is, where’s our firefly friend?” Piper said, shivering and gazing into the haze.
“And an even bigger question,” Prue said, “is how do we get across this river? I don’t see a bridge anywhere.”
Suddenly, a long, narrow boat drifted lazily out of the fog. From a stake in the boat’s stern hung a glass lamp with a flickering flame inside. Standing next to it, a hooded figure in a long black robe was poling the boat toward them.
“Speak of the devil,” Phoebe said, nervously.“Or . . . whomever.”
The sisters stared as the small boat floated creepily toward them. Finally, it hit the beach with a gentle thud. The hooded figure stood silently.
“You think he’s gonna say anything?” Phoebe whispered.
“Maybe he’s waiting for us to make the first move,” Prue whispered back. “Piper, get ready to freeze him if he does anything fishy.”
“Right,” Piper quavered.
“ Then Prue stepped forward, positioning herself at the end of the boat. She tried to peer at the figure’s face, but his long black hood kept it in shadows.
“Can you tell us what’s on the other side of this river?” Prue asked.
The figure shook his head back and forth.
Prue cast a nervous glance back at her sisters. Then she turned back to the boatman.
“Well . . . can you point us to a bridge?
“ Again, the man shook his head.
“Okay,” Phoebe cut in. “How about taking us across the river yourself?”
Finally, the robed man nodded.
“Phoebe,” Piper whispered “are you sure that’s a good idea. Remember what our mother always told us—never accept rides from strangers?”
“What choice do we have?” Phoebe whispered back. She started to climb into the boat. But the ferryman stopped her, holding out his hand.
Phoebe looked at it and recoiled with a gasp.
The hand was . . . rotting! The flesh was dirty, moldering, and oozing with sores. The nails were cracked and bloody. And Phoebe could detect a musty, disgusting odor wafting from the man’s body. It was the smell of death. The ferryman seemed to be walking a fine line between life and the grave. She gagged.
The man’s hand opened, as though he was waiting for Phoebe to hand him something.
“Uch!” she gasped, grabbing onto her sisters. She stared as the ferryman reached up and pulled back his hood. Beneath it was a gruesome face. The man’s nose was half eaten away. Through his dirty, matted beard, Phoebe could see jagged brown teeth. His eyes were blank and blackened. Fleas and lice were visibly squirming in his long mane of hair.
Piper screamed. Then she felt herself go dizzy. Suddenly, all the pieces of this horrible day were falling into place. She clutched at her sisters and exclaimed, “I . . . I know who he is. That’s Charon!”
“Charon,” Prue breathed, staring at the living skeleton. “Okay, and he would be who?”
“This all makes sense now,” Piper said. “The three-headed dog in the attic? That was Cerberus, a vicious guard dog from the Hercules legend. And the bird-woman was a Harpy—another creature from Greek mythology.”
“And that snake thing with the zillion heads that was materializing in the living room when we left?” Phoebe asked.
“The Hydra,” Piper said. “Definitely the Hydra.
“This still doesn’t explain who Charon is,” Prue whispered urgently.
“Charon is the ferryman who takes people across the River Acheron,” Piper said in a trembling voice. “Dead people, that is.”
“Dead people?” Prue whispered. “What is this River Acheron anyway?”
“It’s the river of souls,” Piper whispered, going white and clutching her sisters harder. “It’s the entrance to the underworld. We’re . . . we’re in Hades!”
CHAPTER
5
As Piper uttered the horrible truth—that the sisters had been zapped to the underworld called Hades— Phoebe felt a chill course through her body. She lifted a trembling finger to the side of her throat. When she felt her pulse pounding away, she sighed with relief. “Just checking,” she whispered to her sisters. “Still alive.”
“Uh, Piper . . .” Prue said, pointing at Charon. “What’s he doing?”
The grisly figure was thrusting his oozing, open hand toward Prue.
“Oh, I know this,” Piper said, putting a finger to her temple. “He wants us to pay the fare. Charon won’t take anybody across the River Acheron without the proper fare. In ancient Greece, people were buried with coins to pay him.”
“Charming history lesson,” Phoebe muttered, pating her thin and pocketless Grecian robe. “But I seem to have left my wallet in the real world.”
Prue searched the pockets of her overalls.
“I don’t have so much as a quarter,” she whispered desperately.
“That wouldn’t be any good anyway,” Piper whispered. “If I remember my classics class, the fare was one obol.”
“Okay,” Prue said dryly. “I don’t know what an obol even is, but I know we don’t have one. So what are we going to do?”
With a gruesome moist sound, Charon lifted his arm. He pointed a dirt-smeared finger at Phoebe’s neck.
“What’s he want?” Phoebe asked, trembling.
Piper followed Charon’s gaze. At Phoebe’s throat hung a single pearl on a delicate gold chain.
“I think he’s saying he’ll accept your necklace as the fare,” Piper said with a gulp.
“But I love this necklace!” Phoebe complained, clapping her hand over it. She plucked the fake gold laurel wreath out of Piper’s hair and offered it to the ferry driver instead. He sho
ok his long, shaggy mane and pointed again at Phoebe’s beautiful necklace.
“I guess you can’t con Charon,” she said ruefully. “Oh, all right.”
Phoebe unclasped her necklace and deposited it into Charon’s decaying palm. Then she climbed into the boat and reached to help Prue and Piper in. Charon used his long pole to turn the boat around. And then the Halliwell sisters plunged into the mist of the River Acheron.
In only a few minutes, they felt the boat scrape onto the opposite shore. Piper looked up at Charon. The skeleton was pointing to their left.
“I guess he would know where to go,” Phoebe said. “He’s obviously been here a while.”
The sisters set off down a swampy road along the river, gazing around curiously. But all they saw were more dreary, looming trees.
“Forest to the right of us and fog river to the left of us,” Prue muttered. “I wonder where we could be heading. It feels like the middle of nowhere.”
Suddenly, the tepid wind changed and a burst of musty-smelling fog rolled off the River Acheron, drowning the girls in mist.
“Make that fog all around us,” Piper said, waving her hands in front of her face. “Smelly fog, too!”
The sisters fanned irritably at the moist air and pressed on.
Eventually, the fog cleared and the sisters looked around again. They were still in the withered, awful forest. As they walked, the trees occasionally thinned out to reveal wizened fields, black streams that smelled of curdled milk, and every once in a while, an abandoned, dreary shack—small and dilapidated. There was no greenery, no sign of life. In every house they passed, the windows were eerily darkened. A chilly breeze whistled through their ears.
“Have you noticed how everything here is so dark and gray,” Phoebe said. “Those shacks are the color of driftwood . . .”
“Just like the soil,” Prue said, kicking at the road.
“Just like the trees,” Piper said, glancing around and shivering. Her steps were getting sluggish.
“Oh, the monotony,” Phoebe complained, trudging along.
“Stop complaining, you guy-guy-aaaaaaahs,” Prue said, losing her words in a wide yawn.
Soul of the Bride Page 5
