Charmed. Cole and Phoebe Guardian Series.How quaint the ways of paradox?

Charmed. How quaint the ways of Paradox Chapter 8

Part 1: Time and Time Again

Chapter 8

"How quaint the ways of paradox; At common sense she gaily mocks" (Gilbert and Sullivan. Pirates of Penzance)

Angry, furious that he had failed to make the witches leave the Grimoire in the changed timeline, Tempus whirled though the mirror seeing the high and lows of the life of Belthezor's witch. Somewhere in her story was, he still felt sure the key to restoring the Grimoire and fulfilling his destiny.

As he searched in the pictures oh her life, through the clear view of evil and the long cloudy visions of good he was suddenly hopeful. Just over two years ago, only a few of weeks before the vanquish of the old Source, Belthezor's witch went missing for nearly 24 earth hours.

Tempus searched and searched to find what had happened to her but he found nothing, for 24 hours the witch's life was a blank. He searched through the next few months of her life, the tumultuous ones where the Source was vanquished and Belthezor, true to his nature betrayed his family and absorbed the essence of the Source and its power and for such a short while ruled the underworld, before he was finally struck down by his own fate, betrayed by his witch. And nothing of it changed or came from the witch's missing time. No mention, nothing to change the fates of all of them, no destinies hanging in the balance. Tempus could only conclude it was small magic, a turning of the circle in the lives of the Charmed Ones before they completed their destiny. Nothing happened ,nothing changed. The witch disappeared and she returned and Tempus decided that it was nothing very significant in the destiny of the Charmed Ones, Belthezor or retrieving the Grimoire.

...

It was the day after New Year in San Francisco. In the late afternoon the fog rolled in and even the central part of the city was covered. Phoebe hurried to avoid in the biting cold. She huddled into her jacket and wool cap. Phoebe should have been ecstatically happy yet she was not sure why she was feeling so uneasy. She had had a very happy Christmas and New Year. Cole finally seemed happy, well he should be she supposed, he said all he ever wanted was her and she had agreed to marry him but more than that the craving, the hideous restless and constant fear that had seemed to consume him since she had vanquished, since she had destroyed Belthezor seem to have left him.

In the weeks since Cole had become, since she had made Cole mortal she had feared for what it would do to him, to them, but now everything seemed as if thank God, it would be all right. So she should have been feeling happy, not this nagging concern.

Phoebe took a short cut through an alley way and stopped cold. A demon had appeared out of the shadows. Phoebe did not recognise him but she knew Cole would just say smile and say lower level demon, just out for evil. It was in semi human form with an odd misshapen head and hands and strange grey and green tinged skin. It was dressed in human clothing of sorts and had odd horns protruding almost like cows horns from the side of its head, where the hair should have been was a muddy, mossy mat. At that moment it was bent over the prostrate form of a drunk or drugged homeless person and seemed to be about to indulge in some vampirish ritual using long canine type teeth.

Normally Phoebe would not have considered trying to vanquish a demon in the middle of the day so close to the main San Francisco square but just at the moment, the demon was at the end of a deserted lane, and almost all other passerbys were far more interested in the street performers doing quite breathless acrobatics than what was going on any where else, and this vanquish was such a gimme.

Only to aware of the dangers of daylight vanquishes since Prue's death, she checked again to make sure no one was watching her. She noticed a tall, well dressed man in maybe his late fifties watching her for a second but then he moved into the crowd. Phoebe ran down the alley, yelling at the demon, which let out a blood curling scream as she approached. She leaped into the air and kicked out sending the demon flying backwards. It leapt forward aiming a claw that straight toward her heart. It was so easy to catch its hand and force the claw straight at the demon's body.