The Witch and The Assassin

[scifi]

This is the same novel that I wrote at the old board between April and October 2004; I'm just reposting it. To anyone who hasn't read it, it's essentially my version of Chris's future, with a dual thematic emphasis on both the problems and triumphs of love in all its forms and the fine, nearly invisible line between good and evil.

Disclaimer: I own nothing Charmed.

Table of Contents

Page 1
A Chance Encounter
The Resistance
The Ritual
The Matriarch
In Wyatt's Chambers
Contract Negotiations
The Good Men Do
Back in the Game
Sanctuary
A Living Nightmare
Progress Report
Reaching an Understanding
The Off Switch
Getting Some Answers

Page 2
Brothers
Comparisons
30 Days of Death
Saving Grace
Outbursts
The Return of a Legend
Uncanny Likeness
Improvisation

Page 3

What Little Girls are Made Of
Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
The Other Shoe Drops
Warts and All
Looming Shadows
Vignettes
A Nudge in the Right Direction
Belthazor at the Library
Reenactment


Page 4

Literary Lessons
Still Standing
Everything Dear
Almost Perfect
Father and Son
Alone
The Demon and the Matriarch
The Measure of a Man

Page 5

Reality Check
Happy Birthday
The Exodus Begins
Waiting for the End
The Heat of Battle
Power of the Witches Rise
Endings and Beginnings

Other Stories:

In the "original" timeline: "The Ties That Bind thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106515210
"So Far Down" thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106517821

In my altered timeline (a.k.a. "ANL" Universe): "A Normal Life" thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106516676

[scifi]

“Watch it!” she heard somebody say just before the bottom fell out of one of her grocery bags. Tin cans went rolling helter-skelter down the steep sidewalk in front of the store, but the guy who had yelled managed to stop them all. He piled the cans in his arms and walked up to her.

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s what I get for using paper when it’s been raining.” She presented the openings of the three bags she still had in her arms. “Just toss them in wherever they’ll fit.”<br>
“Hang on a minute.” The guy went through the sliding doors of the entrance, and she watched him through the window. He said something to a bag boy, who immediately took out a sack for the cans. The guy said something else, and the bag boy stuffed a second sack inside for reinforcement. She smiled.

“Better than new,” the guy said when he carried the newly-bagged cans back out to her.

“You didn’t have to do that.”<br>
“Hey, what are strangers for?” He surveyed the parking lot. “I can carry this to your car if you want.”<br>
“I don’t drive. I --” she stopped herself. “I walk.”<br>
“Oh, you live close by?”<br>
“Not too far. It’s the only time I have to get any exercise,” she said.

“Unless you’re weight training at the same time, I wouldn’t want to walk home with four heavy sacks. Let me help you.”<br>
“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly --”<br>
“It’s no problem. I mean, by far, this is the most food I’ve ever seen you buy.”<br>
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”<br>
Red crept into his face when he realized what he’d just said. “That came out sort of psycho, didn’t it?”<br>
“Slightly.”<br>
“I just, you know, meant that -- I mean, you probably never noticed me, but -- I come in here all the time, and, you know, you come here, too, and, well, you’re just . . . hard not to notice.” His voice fell off at the end of his rambling, and she could see the reflection of her incredulous face in his eyes.

“Okay, then,” he said with renewed energy. “Um, I’ll just give you your groceries back and, and, and go -- drown myself or something.”<br>
She gave a half-laugh. “It’s okay. I’m flattered, I think.” She hefted one of her bags over to him. “Just don’t try anything stupid.”<br>
He sighed his relief. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”<br>
She led him around the corner and onto the next street. They walked in an awkward silence for a few minutes until the guy made a sound. “Hmm.”<br>
“What are you hmm-ing about?”<br>
“Oh, I . . . just see that you like Spaghettios.” He looked into the bag.

“And that’s interesting?”<br>
“Well.” He obviously didn’t want to sound like a nut again. “My mom used to say that you can know a lot about a person by the food they eat. She was a chef, so she was weird that way.”<br>
“So you know all about me because I eat Spaghettios?”<br>
“Not all about you, but --” He shrugged. “It’s supposed to be better than reading palms.”<br>
She wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not. “Okay. So tell me about me.”<br>
“Uh, well, the processed food and the TV dinners just mean you don’t have a lot of time to cook, probably because of work, and since they’re high-end dinners and not the cheap kind, it means you’re making a pretty decent living.” He looked over in her bags. “Now, in those sacks, though, you’ve got fresh veggies and some mushrooms, and a bottle of wine, which means you do cook occasionally -- tonight, most likely, because you have company coming and you want to impress them. A guy?”<br>
He was surprising her, so it took her a second to answer through a grin. “No, my aunt.”<br>
“So I’m off a little bit.” He glanced back in one of his bags. “And wherever you work, you don’t like your job, but it pays the bills.”<br>
“How can you tell that?”<br>
He shifted the bags a bit so he could reach into one and pull out a romance novel. “Escapism.”<br>
“Give me that.” She shifted her own bags so she could snatch it away from him. “All right, Sherlock. So what were you going to buy?”<br>
He ducked his head and grinned. “Fiber therapy.”<br>
“Okay. No need to elaborate on that.”<br>
He laughed. “No, it’s for my grandpa.” He flashed an embarrassed smile. “Wow, this is gonna be impressive,” he mumbled to himself. “My . . . job doesn’t exactly pay a lot, so I’m mooching off of him. Taking care of his bowels is the least I can do.”<br>
“You must love your job, then, to stay with it.”<br>
“Not usually. I was sort of born to it, though.”<br>
“Me, too. That’s why my aunt is coming tonight -- to discuss family business.”<br>
A rumble of thunder broke up their discussion, and large drops of rain started falling on them. “It’s a good thing this is my building!” she said as they ran up the steps. There was only room for one in the doorway, so he let her stand out of the rain. The water was drenching his shirt, causing it to define the outline of his chest. She brought her eyes back up to his. “You want to come in and wait this out?” she asked and then keyed her ID into the door lock.

But he suddenly looked as if he were listening for a distant voice. When he brought his attention back to her, he seemed disappointed. “Uh, no, I can’t. I gotta go.” He handed the groceries over and started to walk away. Then he turned impulsively. “Listen, can I see you again?”<br>
She smiled. “When?”<br>
“For lunch, maybe?”<br>
“Sure. Around noon.”<br>
“Okay,” he said, and started running down the street.

“Hey,” she yelled out. “Don’t you want to know my name?”<br>
He ran back and laughed. “That would be helpful.”<br>
“Bianca.”<br>
“Hi. I’m Chris. Chris Halliwell.” He started running again. “Bye!”<br>
Her smile fell from her face. Chris Halliwell. Wyatt’s brother. She started to call him back -- to lie and say she had forgotten an important appointment at noon, but he had already disappeared. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the doorframe. She had just broken one of her family’s cardinal rules -- never accept a date with a client’s relative. With the sort of people her family dealt with, relatives were all too often their targets.

[scifi]

Chris heard the hacking cough before he actually materialized into the boardroom at his grandfather’s company. Victor’s nurse, Madeline, was trying to put his oxygen tube to his nose, but he was fidgeting and waving her off with the same hand which held a cigar.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I’ll take some in a minute, but let me finish this first.” He indicated the cigar. Madeline gave him the “don’t make me hurt you” look that she was famous for. “I mean it,” he said. “Get that tank away before you blow us all up.”<br>
Chris walked past the other people gathered around the long ebony table, snatched the cigar away from his grandpa, and mashed it all the way down into the ashtray.

“Hey, that was a Havana!”<br>
“Put it on him, Maddie,” Chris said as he sat and took his place among the other leaders of the Resistance.

“Why are you all wet?” Victor asked as Madeline adjusted the tube, implying more than the obvious meaning of the question.

“Long story.”<br>
“For which we have no time,” said Bridget, the head witch of the oldest British coven still in existence. That her line was only about two hundred years old spoke volumes about the state of the magical world. “I can’t hold the cloak long without my sister.”<br>
Chris’s gaze instinctively gravitated to the chair left vacant by the death of her sister a week -- no, two weeks -- before.

Victor nodded at her words. “You’re right.” He tried moving his nosepiece so that it did not rub against the already irritating oxygen burns at his nostrils, but gave up. “Reports.”<br>
Chris closed his eyes and placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands at his forehead, resting it on them in an attitude that might have been taken as wearily prayerful by someone who didn’t know that he had stopped praying years ago. He was, in fact, simply nursing the tension headache that he kept every waking moment; it just became more noticeable when he attended these meetings and heard the increasingly bad news they brought. He listened to the potion-makers -- mortals who had lost beloved witches and then taken up what parts of the craft that they could -- report on the scarcity of this or that ingredient, and to Victor responding that he’d have a shipment brought in at such and such time, as soon as he could get the money wired from Switzerland. He listened to the smattering of witches left in the group -- a veritable magical United Nations -- report on the demonic happenings in their countries. He listened to the casualty lists from the covens represented here, recitations that grew longer every day. He listened, and breathed, and nursed a headache -- the three things that he could count on telling him when he woke up in the mornings that, yes, despite all odds and wishes to the contrary, he was still alive.

Of course, there could be one more thing he could count on, if all went well with Bianca. It was unlike him to look for a silver lining, but there she was.

“Chris,” Victor said. “What news?”<br>
He brought his clasped hands down to the table. “Nothing good,” he sighed. What a stupid thing to say. When, in the last year and a half that he’d been running information from the underworld, had he ever said anything good? “But I think it explains why there has been such an increase in attacks.”

He had the full attention of everyone in the room. “Two things. I found out who these assassins are who have been picking you off. They’re called the Phoenix -- a coven of powerful witches, demonically powerful.”<br>
“How many are there?” Victor asked.

“I don’t know. I think Wyatt doesn’t even know; he only ever meets with the Matriarch.”<br>He glanced to the potion-makers. “There is a vanquishing potion, but I haven’t been able to check the Book. I mean, Wyatt always tells me, ‘It’s your Book, too,’ but, yeah, right.”<br>
“We’ll all check our books,” said Miranda, the witch who sat beside him. “Maybe one of us has an entry.”<br>
Chris nodded. “The other thing worries me more, though. Wyatt is trying to write a new spell, one meant to augment a regular demon summoning spell.” He paused. “I think he wants to resurrect demons -- ones that it took the Power of Three to vanquish.”<br>
Nobody moved for a moment. Miranda glanced at the few other witches in the room. “Do we even have enough covens left to join for that kind of power?”<br>
“Not at the rate we’re dying off,” another witch said.

“I don’t think he’d send them after you -- the assassins are doing too good a job for that. And I think he’s satisfied that his magical purge is progressing so well,” Chris mused. “No, he has something much bigger planned. I just don’t know what. I do know that if anybody wants out, if anybody wants to go into hiding with Leo, now would be a good time.”<br>
It made him a little proud that all the people in the room shook their heads no. Then Miranda turned to him and swallowed. “I do think it’s time to take my kids, though.”<br>
“Victor,” Bridget whispered. Her eyes were closed and she was swaying with weakness in her chair. “Time.”<br>
“All right,” Victor answered. “In three days time, we’ll meet again. If you find anything between now and then, call Chris.”<br>
Chris watched as the other witches joined hands with two or three mortals apiece and said their various spells to transport everyone away from the boardroom. When he saw they had all safely left, he took Madeline’s and Victor’s arms to orb them home.

It was going to be a long three days.

[scifi]

Torches flickered to life a moment before his entrance, the yellow-orange light revealing the decrepit stonework of nearly a century and a half ago. The blue and white light of his arrival made very little impact on the illumination level, though no one would dare tell him lest they detract from his glory. His entourage of twelve demons shimmered after him, spaced equidistant around the room and all facing inward toward their master: his lieutenant had insured their perfect formation so as to expedite the plan.

“Are you sure the spell will work?” the lieutenant asked.

“The words are simple, Ekera,” Wyatt answered, preoccupied with conjuring the materials he needed. “You know me: I could sing a nursery rhyme and it’d work. The ritual is the thing.”<br>
“But is it wise to summon him? You know he can have no love for your family, and to bring him here, where those memories of betrayal will be strongest --”<br>
Wyatt’s amused smile stopped her. She would have been beautiful, with her flawlessly dark skin and immaculate form, had it not been for her eye sockets, sunken and empty as though plucked out like grapes. But those empty eyes saw everything, saw too much, even, especially when they saw danger that did not exist. “That’s your trouble; you worry too much.” He began placing poppies on the floor in the shape of an arched doorway. “Everyone, demon or human, has a specific place that holds the essence of who they are,” he said as though conducting a lecture class. “There is no other place so closely linked to him than this mausoleum, which is precisely why I am here.”<br>
He stood back from the doorway like an artist surveying his work, then stepped around his lieutenant to reach for a sword broken at the middle, emblematic of a life cut short in battle. He placed it at the bottom of the door and conjured a cauldron and altar in front of it. Then he poured a circle of salt encompassing both the doorway and the altar.

"Take your position, Ekera. And all of you be prepared. He probably won't be too happy at first."

The twelve demons ignited energy balls in their hands and held them at the ready. Wyatt conjured a white dove and held it protectively to his chest with one hand and raised the poppy doorway into the air vertical with the floor, where it hovered in perfect formation.

"Obey my words, ye powers of yore:
Demon three witches did abhor,
Fettered now by death and pain,
Break the bonds, your life regain."

There was a brief flicker of red light within the doorway, and Wyatt repeated the spell, this time wrenching the head off the dove and draining its blood into the cauldron. The light was stronger this time.

"Obey my words, ye powers of yore:
Demon three witches did abhor,
Fettered now by death and pain,
Break the bonds, your life regain."

He dipped the body of the dove into the blood, staining its feathers black-red. He held it close again, willing it to live. The blood turned completely black and spread of its own volition over the white breast and to the throat, where a head started to reform. By the time Wyatt had said the spell a fourth time the bird he held was no longer a dead white dove, but a sable raven which took a staggered breath and fluttered its wings. Wyatt threw it up into the air and let it fly out of the mausoleum. The light in the poppy doorway swirled red and orange, as though looking out onto the fires of hell. He had done it.

"Magic forces black and white
Reaching out through space and light,
Be he far or be he near
Bring me the demon Belthazor here."

Flames erupted from the doorway and enveloped everything within the circumference of the salt circle, including Wyatt himself. But he stood unscathed as the charred poppies fell to the ground; his demon stood in the same sheep-skin jacket in which he had been vanquished, and he was doubled over like he was nursing a shot to the gut.

Cole hazarded a glance around the room at the twelve minions and their master, and held his pained position for only a moment before igniting four energy balls of his own, two in each hand. He sent them flying and took out three demons; the fourth had gone toward Ekera, who morphed into the shadow she was to let it pass through her and scorch the wall. Cole then shimmered behind another, jabbing his next energy ball through it's back, causing it to explode from the inside out. As this demon vanished in flames, Wyatt nonchalantly held up a hand, stopping Cole from shimmering or creating any further energy balls. "Calm yourself, and stop killing my demons."

"What did you do to me?" Cole asked in his iciest whisper.

"I gave you a new life. Want to hear about it?"

Wyatt pulled Cole through the air to stand before him. "Promise to behave?" Cole gave the briefest indication of a nod, and Wyatt released him.

"Who are you?" the resurrected demon asked.

"Piper's firstborn."

With a roar, Cole threw an energy ball, but Wyatt deflected it. "Don't do that again."

Wyatt circled him, sizing up the infamous Belthazor of his family's lore, and obviously finding him less imposing than he had been led to believe. "You'll find I have none of her silly notions about personal gain, or protecting the innocent -- or anything at all, really. We're on the same side."

"I don't have a side."

"Neither do I." Wyatt hoisted himself up to sit on top of Cole's father's sepulchre, purposely striking a nerve in his new recruit. "In the time that you've been dead, Wyatt Halliwell has become a name to be feared throughout the magical world, good and evil alike. I have control of both."

Cole raised his eyebrows skeptically. "With nobody opposing you? Then why do you want me?"

"Those who oppose me within the magical community will not long do so. I want you so I can move on to bigger and better things."

"Like what?"

"The mortal world. I want everything."

"Again I ask, why me?"

"You have something my other demons lack -- a human soul."

Cole laughed, if not regaining his composure, then giving a believable show of it. "I think you can handle it yourself. I, uh, had a similar job before, and you see how that worked out for me."

"One of the first rules of effective management is delegating. So, I'm learning to delegate."

"So, you want me to infiltrate the human world, run for political office or something that will give me power, and then hand it all over to you. Is that the gist?"

"That‘s a little prosaic, but close enough."

Cole eyed the remaining demons, assessing their strengths and weaknesses based on their types, and then glanced back to Wyatt. "I was the Source of all Evil; witless lackey to a egomaniacal kid sort of pales in comparison." He started to turn away, but then remembered his manners. "Thanks for the lift, though." And he shimmered out.

Ekera stepped forward as though preparing to follow, but Wyatt stopped her. "No, he's an even match for you." He waved a hand and the materials for the ritual vanished. "I learned what I wanted to know. The spell and ritual work. Don't worry; he'll be back, and then I'll kill him myself." He turned to her and let out a breath, signaling a new train of thought. "Moving onto other business, get me the Phoenix."

[scifi]

Bianca hated everything she was good at. So whenever she cooked for her Aunt Tess, she made sure to have a glass of wine on hand to make the process a little more endurable. Tonight, though, she had already started on her second glass. She couldn’t keep Chris’s voice out of her head. When he had shown up at her building at the stroke of twelve and asked through the intercom for her to buzz him in, or at least to answer him, she had simply stayed in her chair, trying to read a page of the romance novel he’d teased her about. He’d asked a few more times, wondering if maybe she was in the shower and didn’t hear him, or if maybe the intercom was broken. But all the time, her eyes had kept running over the same sentence on the page. When she’d finally heard his departing self-criticism, “That’s great, Chris. Why don’t you see if you can find some more bright spots in your day to blot out,” she’d gotten up and tossed the novel in the garbage.

Bianca glanced at the clock on the wall. Tess was supposed to arrive in about twenty minutes. She broke her pasta noodles in half, placed them in boiling water, and threw the empty box in the trash on top of the novel. She turned to her cutting board and began mincing parsley for garnish. Her aunt liked her meals formal, which meant Bianca needed to finish here quickly so she could change out of the comfortable jeans and t-shirt she was wearing and into something more constricting. She’d leave her hair in its loose ponytail, however; she wouldn’t give Tess that much satisfaction.

She stopped her knife’s rocking motion on the board at the sensation of someone appearing behind her, and in the time it would take her to lift the blade for the next chop, she spun around and threw it with perfect aim. Tess caught it by the handle and offered it back to its owner.

Bianca took it and turned again to her parsley. “One of these days, you’re not going to catch it.”<br>
“And that would just break your heart, wouldn’t it?” Tess pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down.

Bianca didn’t answer one way or another, but simply poured her aunt a glass of wine. “You’re early,” she said as she placed the glass on the table. “You’re never early.”<br>
“And you’re never slow. I stood there nearly a second before you reacted. What would you’re mother say?” Tess sampled the wine and eyed Bianca’s turned back. “Something’s bothering you.”<br>
Bianca again didn’t respond, but instead pretended to be concentrating on making the parsley small enough for her liking. Yet she knew she was bound to answer if her aunt posed a direct question. Tess’s position required the utmost obedience. How Bianca hated this family.

“Tell me what it is.” Tess’s commands were always eerily warm, as though she really cared how anyone else felt.

“I met someone today,” she said dully.

“Why does that bother you?”<br>
“Chris Halliwell.”<br>
“I see,” Tess said in that irritating way that implied she understood everything, or at least thought she did. “You know his loyalties are suspect?”<br>
“I heard that was a rumor.”<br>
Tess thingyed her head, assessing her niece for a moment. "I have no interest in who you take into your bed, Bianca, as long as it doesn't endanger this family."

Bianca didn’t try to hide her disgust as she pushed the bread plate to her aunt. “I just met him.”<br>
"Nevertheless, remember what I tell you. Don't forget where your loyalties lie."

"I have loyalties?"

Tess smiled humorlessly. "That's why I chose you."

Bianca put down her knife and held onto the counter, not quite understanding what her aunt was saying, but somehow dreading to hear an elaboration.

"I'm getting older Bianca. The day is coming when I won't be able to catch a knife, and then where will this family be.” She stood up from the table and joined Bianca at the counter, forcing her niece to face her by turning her by the chin. “I've decided to train the next Matriarch."

Bianca’s face showed nothing of what was inside. She decided she wouldn‘t vomit until after Tess left. She never asked for this, never wanted it. She never wanted any of it.

"Why me?" She covered her weakness with a steely voice, an old habit that Tess had taught her, and one that died hard.

"Because you're the best. And because you have none of the others' illusions about why we are what we are.” Tess took up the knife and scraped the parsley bits into a pile in the corner of the cutting board. “It has never been about loyalty to anyone outside the family, and Wyatt is no exception. It is about survival, and you alone of all the members of the Phoenix understand that."

Bianca nodded. As a Phoenix, it was in her upbringing to take the Matriarch's word as law, no matter how much she despised Tess, and no matter how much she despised herself for following her.

Bianca sensed someone else shimmer into the room, but since Tess didn’t instantly react violently to the presence, she didn’t either.

"Wyatt wants you, Matriarch,” the dark eyeless demon said.

“Thank you, Ekera,” Tess answered and turned off Bianca‘s stove. "There now, Bianca. Your first lesson awaits. Come. Your Chris might be there,” she teased, and then shimmered out with Ekera.

Bianca closed her eyes for a moment before following her aunt‘s trail. "I hope not."

[scifi]

Just as Chris had said he could know about her by reading her groceries, Bianca knew she could probably pick Wyatt out of a crowd of strangers based on the appearance of his home. His chambers were like nothing else in the Underworld -- they looked exactly the opposite. They caused Bianca to mentally review the history and legends of the last five years.

Shortly after the Charmed Ones were vanquished, Wyatt had begun his crusade to rid the world of any magical being whose existence was, to his mind, no longer necessary. He'd started with whitelighters and moved on to Elders. It was rumored that he blamed his father's inability to heal his mother on the outdated system of Elders' rules that had kept them apart. But then there were those people with more calculating minds like Bianca who figured he simply wanted all witches' nearly limitless supply of second-chances eliminated by killing off their healers -- it made sense, for only after the Elders were finally gone did Wyatt begin hunting witches in earnest. According to the stories, Wyatt had planned to live Up There, using the Elders' resources to coordinate his attacks. But those same legends also said Leo destroyed the Elders' home and everything in it before escaping as the sole surviving avatar of all that ancient race's wisdom.

And Wyatt's home amid the stony claustrophobic catacombs of the Underworld only served to lend credence to those stories, for when Bianca entered his hall with Tess and Ekera, she entered an exact replica of that pure white haze and gilded columns that had been obliterated. But scattered throughout the hall were reminders of where they really were -- demons stood in various fighting stances, some brandishing athames, some preparing energy balls, but all of them living beings Wyatt had permanently frozen and arranged for decoration like figures in some macabre wax museum. They served as a small reminder of how powerful he was -- and surely this creation of a center of Evil in the likeness of the center of Good was meant as a slap in the face to his father.

As they neared the golden doors that marked the entrance to Wyatt's council chambers, Tess spoke without care of Ekera's hearing. "You will remain silent, Bianca, and listen to everything that is said and not said. Hear vocal inflections, hesitations; look for anything in his manner that might indicate what he's thinking. If you can anticipate him, you can get a better price."

Ekera pushed open the doors and ushered them inside. This room was also empty, save for Wyatt's living statuary, but suddenly a table and three chairs appeared in the center of the room with several legal looking papers stacked neatly at each place. Bianca scanned the room, but saw no one. So she jumped uncharacteristically when she heard Wyatt's voice at her ear.

"Welcome, Matriarch and her Heir."

[scifi]

Ekera stood fixed at the entrance as Wyatt followed Bianca and Tess to the table. When the three of them sat, Bianca saw that the papers were blank. This was apparently the way they always conducted business, because neither the Matriarch nor her employer seemed fazed. So Bianca put on her best face of professional experience, even if she had never seen negotiations done this way, and waited for one of them to speak.

“The informant you brought me last time was only marginally useful -- she wouldn’t give me the highest level leaders of the Resistance,” Wyatt began. “But she did give me four very powerful names -- I wouldn’t be surprised if they were part of the inner circle.”<br>
“And they are…?” Tess asked.

Wyatt waved a hand, and the four names appeared simultaneously on the first page of their contracts. Bianca glanced at them -- unfamiliar, so perhaps not as powerful as Wyatt described them. But then again, she must never underestimate.

“Something the matter, Heir?” Wyatt asked, but before she could answer, he continued. “What is your name? I can’t keep calling you ‘Heir;’ that’s stupid.”<br>
You have no idea how stupid, was the reply that went through her head, but remembering what Tess had told her, she kept her answer to the point. “Bianca.”<br>
Wyatt nodded and waited a beat for her to respond to his original question. “Well?”<br>
Bianca glanced at Tess for permission. “I want to know what their powers are if they are so formidable.”<br>
“You don’t want to research for yourself?”<br>
“I could, but it’d cost you extra.”<br>
Wyatt smiled at the Matriarch, indicating his approval of the Heir, and then caused a detailed report on each of the four targets to appear on the pages. Bianca read over them, fingering through to the sixth page of the contract.

“What do you think?” Wyatt asked her, almost totally ignoring Tess now. Bianca could imagine her perturbation, and nearly continued negotiating by herself out of spite. Instead, she deferred. “I think I’m listening.”<br>
“Three of them, I want dead; the fourth is to be brought to me for questioning. I’ll leave it to you to decide which will best replace my dearly departed informant -- but leave her for last so she can learn of the other three’s fates and perhaps be a little more talkative to save her own neck.”<br>
“Any specifications about how they are to die?” Tess asked.

“I don’t care. Just make sure the rest of the Resistance can’t ignore it.”<br>
Bianca watched as the instructions finished writing themselves in legalese that left no contingency unaddressed.

“Does it meet with Bianca’s approval?” Wyatt asked.

Bianca turned back to the pages with the witches’ descriptions. “These witches will likely require more than one of us at each kill.” She flipped ahead to the section on payment. “But these prices are for standard, individual service. We have to think of profit, you know.”<br>
Wyatt waved a hand. “Three hundred thousand per target?”<br>
Bianca gave no discernable reaction save to answer, “That’s a little better.”<br>
“And I want the same team at each kill,” Wyatt continued.

The Matriarch frowned at this irregularity. “Why?”<br>
“Because of the second part of the contract. I have someone who needs the benefit of your experience, and I don’t want him shifted around from teacher to teacher.” He glanced between the two women and then called out, “Chris!”<br>
Bianca watched the blue orbs become the man she had met that very morning, heard his “What is it?” come out as only an annoyed little brother could say, and wilted inwardly when he glanced in her direction. For the briefest of moments, he let his mouth hang partially open, and the muscles around his eyes softened in pained disbelief. Then he brought his lips together, and the muscles hardened. His expression was impassive, indifferent -- the same mask Bianca wore.

“Where have you been all day?” Wyatt asked.

“Running errands for Grandpa.”<br>
Wyatt explained the family dynamics for the uninitiated. “Our grandfather’s a mortal -- raised Chris -- so he insists on living there until the old man bites it.”<br>
“Speaking of whom, he’s sleeping now, so can you hurry up and tell me what you want, because if I’m not there when he wakes up, he’s going to ask questions, and then I’m going to have to make up some lame excuse, because you know Grandpa, the less talk of magic, the better --”<br>
“This may take a while,” Wyatt interrupted.

Chris threw his arms up. “Well, can I at least sit down?”<br>
Wyatt conjured a fourth chair beside himself at the table, but Chris moved it over to one of the columns where he could balance it leaning back on two legs.

“Join us at the grown-ups’ table, Chris,” Wyatt said as he orbed his brother and the chair back beside him.

Chris folded his arms and slumped down in the chair. Bianca realized she was sitting across from the only person in the world Wyatt loved besides himself, for no one else would dare act like a pouting teenager around him.

Wyatt brought his attention back to the assassins. “He’s not as dumb as he acts sometimes; he just needs a little discipline. He’s actually very good at what he does.”<br>
“Which is?” The Matriarch wondered.

“Demon hunting,” Chris answered.

“He’s on the other end of my plans -- there are cells of demon resistance, as well -- they all want to try their hands at ruling the Underworld.”<br>
“A display is in order, perhaps?” Wyatt summoned a demon with a flick of his wrist. “Kill him, Chris.”<br>
The younger brother didn’t even stand up, but motioned for the demon to be thrown back into the extended sword of one of the living statues. The flaming vanquish extended over the statue, which also exploded.

“Why did you do that?” Wyatt said.

“What? That statue was ugly.”<br>
“No, I mean explain your strategy.”<br>
The look on Chris’s face said What's the big deal, but he spoke up anyway. “That was a Horde demon -- very low intelligence, low power, so a basic back stab will do it. The only thing is, they’re like roaches; for every one you kill, there’s a hundred more crawling around in the woodwork.”<br>
“And if I asked you to vanquish Ekera?” Wyatt indicated his lieutenant’s presence by the door, which had so far been so unobtrusive, Bianca had nearly forgotten about her.

“I can’t. She’s a Shade: shadowy, elusive, upper level, which means I’d need a spell and a potion made with her flesh. And for both of those, I’d need to check the Book.”<br>
Wyatt seemed proud. “Well, there are easier ways to dispel shadows, but that’ll suffice.” He smiled at the Matriarch. “You see? He’s good. But his talents are wasted. To be really useful to me, he needs to learn how to kill witches.”<br>
Bianca’s watchful eye caught Chris’s brief flash of fear again be replaced by his mask. “I don’t want to kill witches.”<br>
“You’ve never tried. You’ll do fine.” Wyatt mistook his apprehension for self-doubt. “Assuming you’ll take him,” he feigned an interest in the Matriarch’s opinion.

“For a price.”<br>
“Of course. Double your retainer, and double your completion fee?”<br>
“More than generous,” Tess answered. “Perhaps you would like him assigned to a particular mentor?” She smiled her fake motherly smile. “Bianca, maybe?”<br>
Bianca cut her eyes at her aunt. It would be so easy to kill her here and now.

“As you see fit, Matriarch. Train him like one of your own.” He conjured a pen for Tess to sign the contract, and unexpectedly, Bianca received a pen as well. “You should co-sign, since you’ll be responsible for my brother.”<br>
Her tight, neat signature appeared on all three copies of the contract as she wrote; each party would be able to keep their own.

“You can wait outside, Chris,” Wyatt said, and before his brother could say a word, he orbed him to the other side of the golden doors.

“I have a separate contract to discuss with you before you take up your charge with him.” Wyatt conjured a new set of papers, but these already had his terms drawn up. “You’ll find the payment more than satisfactory -- more than I’ve ever offered you before.”

Bianca read through the first paragraph and glanced up at Wyatt in astonishment. She had underestimated him.

“For some time now, the number of witches in the world has been dwindling, and not because of us,” Wyatt explained. “I know Leo is doing it. He’s established a haven for them -- cloaking them from me, probably training them for a final stand. You will make sure he doesn’t succeed. Find him, and eliminate the threat.”<br>
“Why not use darklighters?” she asked.

Wyatt regained his amused smirk. “There are no more darklighters. Except, perhaps…” He motioned for one of the statues to move toward him. The frozen darklighter held his bow ready for an arrow to fly. Wyatt orbed the arrow away from him and let it come to rest on the table in front of him. “One arrow in all the world. I’ve been saving it for just this occasion.”<br>
“The problem with darklighter poison is that it works too slowly. We’re used to faster methods.” Bianca said. “Unless of course, we could find a way to alter it, make it more effective.”<br>
Tess nodded. “Yes, I know someone who may be able to help. With your permission, of course, Wyatt.”<br>
“I thought you might. Of course, you’ll also find in the contract that you must kill whoever makes the new poison. It’s not information I want spread around.”<br>
Once again, Bianca watched her handwriting copied onto the other pages. Wyatt stood up as though needing to stretch his legs after an enjoyable diversion. “Well, I’ll let you get to work. I have a little brother waiting out there for a very beautiful woman.”

[scifi]

Bianca felt Ekera’s eyeless gaze on her neck as she passed through the golden doorway and into the hall where Chris stood with his hands in his pockets, leaning his back against a column and watching the floor. She waited silently until Ekera took the hint that she wanted to be alone with him and shimmered away. Rolling up her copy of the contracts like a scroll in her hands as she walked toward him, Bianca stared at the paper like she hoped it would tell her what to say.

“If it helps, I’m sorry,” she ventured.

“For what?” came his listless reply.

“For everything: for not telling you, for standing you up, for --”<br>
“It doesn’t matter.”<br>
She reached for his arm, but he shrank away from her touch as though she were carrying a disease that could spread through and devour him.

“You’re very different from the guy I met this morning.”<br>
“Yeah, well, the guy you met this morning thought he had a chance of getting some.”<br>
From the unnatural way these words sounded in his mouth, Bianca could tell they were a lie, but she resented him for saying them for the sole purpose of insulting her. “Civility’s a virtue, you know.”<br>
“I’m not a very virtuous guy.”<br>
Bianca glanced back to where she had left Wyatt. “Obviously.” She started to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” Chris called. “If I have to work with you, I at least need to know who we’re after.”<br>
“No, you don’t. You’re to follow our rules, and the first one is to perform under pressure. You don’t get to know anything before your first kill; it makes you realize survival is everything. If you come out of it alive, good for you.” She turned away again. “I’ll call you when it’s time,” she said before shimmering.

Chris stared for a moment at the spot where she had stood, and then orbed home.

When he came into the living room, Victor did, indeed, seem to have fallen asleep in his recliner, his head propped up on several pillows because he could no longer breathe lying down. Chris pulled his blanket up to his neck, stood back out of the light from his reading lamp, and watched his Grandpa’s chest rise and fall with short, labored gasps. And for some reason he thought of his father, wondered what he was doing, and doubted Leo was thinking the same of him. If he made the time to come around, Leo could heal the tightness in his Grandpa’s chest, make the effects of a stubborn old man’s bad habit go away. But then again, would Victor let him, even if he were to offer? Somehow, Chris doubted it, for however open Victor had become to magic since his daughters’ deaths, he would still prefer to die naturally himself, without Leo’s intervention. It wasn’t like the opportunity to make the choice would ever present itself, anyway, since Leo kept himself holed up with those people too scared or too weak to stand against Wyatt. It wasn’t fair, what he thought of his father and all the good he had done, and Chris knew it. But he didn’t care. All he knew was he was going to lose his Grandpa sooner or later -- he would be left utterly alone -- and he was never more frightened of that inevitability than he was tonight.

Memories of the girl who blushed when he pulled a cheap romance out of her groceries gave way to images of the killer who could sit and listen to Wyatt assign him to a witch hunting detail like she was hearing something as mundane as the latest weather report. He didn’t often let himself feel the kind of anger that caused tears to come to his eyes, but now he saw his fist slam into the wall with blurred vision. He was destined to have everything he ever thought was good stripped away from him.

“I take it your meeting with Wyatt didn’t go so well,” Victor said from his chair.

Chris flung himself down on the couch and buried his head in his hands. “You know the grocery store girl I told you about -- Bianca? She’s a Phoenix.”<br>
“Oh.”<br>
“And that’s the fluff story compared to everything else.” Chris couldn’t sit still, so he stood up again and started pacing. “Wyatt wants her to train me to kill witches.”<br>
“What?”<br>
“He took out a contract tonight. And part of it is that I go along on their witch hunts. I have no idea who the targets are, and she won’t tell me; she won’t let me near that list -- I don’t even know how many they’re after. How the --” he shook his head and let out a defeated sigh, “How am I supposed to do this? I can’t not go. Wyatt would get suspicious. But I can’t just stand there and help them kill my innocents.”<br>
“Chris,” Victor answered after a moment. “Your cover is the most important thing right now. You’re the only one who can warn us of what he’s up to, however little in advance that may be. Without you, we’re lost.” Chris stopped pacing and stared at his grandfather. “You’re a good kid,” Victor said, and then caught himself with a sorrowful chuckle. “A good man. And whatever happens,” he paused, choosing his words deliberately, “Whatever you do, don’t forget that.”<br>
Victor let his words sink in before clearing his throat and continuing. “The best we can do right now is warn the others. We don’t have much time -- they may be setting up surveillance on their first target as we speak. Go to the heads of family, have them spread the word through the covens to be on alert.” He shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe if they’re prepared…”

Chris nodded and orbed to his first destination, but he knew why Victor hadn’t finished his sentence. It was because no matter what they tried, there was no hope.

[scifi]

Like his father before him, Cole was a lawyer -- and as such, he was a natural born fact-finder. Piper had been pregnant when he died, at least she had been in this reality, and judging by her son’s appearance, Cole had been dead at least twenty years. It should have seemed a speck of time for an ageless demon, but it was an eternity to Cole and his very human concerns. So this morning, the first place he went when he realized his former Underworld connections would be of little use in getting him up to speed now that he’d told their leader to shove it was the County Archives.

The place was nothing like he remembered -- no books, no maps, nothing but rows upon rows of cubicles with a metal table and chair in each one. And instead of a mildly competent-looking academic at the help desk, a college kid sat playing some sort of holographic video game.

“Excuse me,” Cole said, but the kid kept playing. Cole gestured toward the game console while ostensibly moving his hand to scratch the back of his head, and the short-circuit he created caused the hologram disappear. “Excuse me,” he said again, and the confused kid had no choice but to acknowledge him. “Hi. I need to find information on somebody.”<br>
“Then just go sit down,” the kid said like Cole was from another planet.

“Just sit?”<br>
“Yeah,” he answered impatiently. Figuring out what went wrong with his game was obviously a life or death matter to this kid.

Cole eyed the cubicles like they were some sort of traps -- he didn’t trust any enclosure that required a space only five feet square. But he squeezed into one in the far corner, away from everyone else and sat. Immediately a console similar to the one the help desk kid was using rose up from an opening in the table. It projected an image into the air, one that wasn’t quite opaque enough to prevent him from seeing through the welcome screen and to the wall behind it. A picture of the Golden Gate Bridge hovered in midair, and below it were the words “Welcome to the San Francisco County Archives” and a whole slew of search options. This was obviously the future’s version of a computer, but there was no keyboard or mouse. Cole read through the options, muttered to himself, “Personal Records,” and was a bit surprised when the image switched to another set of instructions for him to indicate the name of the person he wished to research. This thing obviously worked on voice command. “Phoebe Halliwell,” he said.

Almost instantaneously the computer pulled up an “Ask Phoebe” promotional photo, apparently taken when his ex-wife was at the height of her career. He smiled, not sure of how he liked her super-short do. He remembered how thick her hair had been sliding through his fingers, the smell of it when he would hold her close, how like a child it made her seem when he would smooth it away from her face while watching her sleep. But then he saw the parenthetical lifespan under the photo where her biography began -- there was a death date there.

A short cry escaped him as he pushed himself up from the table, sending his chair clattering backward behind him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t care less that people were looking at him -- he just stood there, sobbing and holding on to the edge of the table, because he knew if he let go he would fall. How long had he fought to keep Phoebe, to get her back, to prove himself to her? He had fought everything -- time, space, his own nature, her aversion, and had had every intention of continuing that fight from the moment he emerged from the flames. But not this. He couldn’t fight this. Phoebe had finally done her worst; she hurt him more by dying than she ever could have by vanquishing him.

There was no way for Cole to know how long he stayed in this position; so lost in his sorrow was he that he didn’t notice the first several words that stupid kid said in trying to get his attention. When finally the voice penetrated his senses, he turned his feverishly glazed eyes on the boy. “Don’t bother me,” he warned barely above a whisper.

The kid backed away, and Cole regained enough sense to right his chair and sit back down. He surveyed the options for further information on Phoebe. “Police Report,” he heard his own deadened voice say.

He read through for the facts of her death -- it had been at the Manor -- she was the third body in the house -- all of them had died of broken necks -- there were no suspects -- the case was five years cold.

He swallowed to prepare himself, then said, “Crime Scene.”<br>
The computer brought up a video file where apparently the police now filmed everything in real-time instead of snapping photos. He followed the camera’s view, almost as though he were walking through the house himself, as it passed through the familiar hall and dining room and stopped in the conservatory. There it closed in on the spot where Piper’s body lay prone, her eyes closed in a head twisted at a sickeningly disproportionate angle. The view panned around the room for any indication of a struggle, but finding none, turned to go into the kitchen.

In another time, he might have reveled in seeing Paige’s body the way it was shown here: she must have been sitting at the table when she died, for she was slumped over in a chair, her neck snapped just like Piper’s had been. In another life, seeing her dead might have brightened his gloomiest day. But she had died in the same room as Phoebe, and that connection to his wife softened his hatred for the sister who had ruined him. Phoebe lay on the floor by the sink; a glass of water that had fallen from her hand as she went down had shattered near her head, sending shards of glass into her face. Other than that, there had been no blood shed, nothing in the Manor had been disturbed. They had been taken utterly unawares: no demon he knew of could have killed the Charmed Ones without so much as a broken picture frame. He stared at the film loop through the scene again and again and again, his suspicion becoming more solidified each time he saw Phoebe.

Again he stood up, but this time, there were no tears in his eyes. He vaguely felt people stare at him as he strode out of the room, but he had only one thing on his mind. It was time he got back into this good versus evil game.

[scifi]

It was nearly noon by the time Chris arrived at his last stop, a field of what was once tall grass which had now been so trampled by the press of people that little remained except a hard floor of dirt, a border of woodland, and a stream of drinking water in constant risk of contamination. The innocents here were in the least immediate danger, so they could afford to be last, even if they did represent the greatest concentration of magical beings in the world.

He orbed in to the encampment amid the bustle of the mid-day shift change, but he made his way relatively quickly through the maze of provisional shelters and campfires, through the intricate dance of witches, gypsies, shamans, and other endangered groups moving to their assigned places, through the sundry sounds and smells of nearly a thousand people packed into half a square mile, and to the “Manor Number Two,” a collection of boards and canvas held together magically in the boughs of a tree to house the three children.

“Kit!” he called up into the treehouse, but instead of getting an answer from Phoebe’s older daughter, he was greeted by Paige’s little girl orbing in with her arms around one of his legs. “Gotcha!”<br>
Chris couldn’t help but smile at the five-year-old who had never had a chance to know her mother. “Yes, Helen, you got me.” He looked up to where Kit was levitating down from their home and asked his question just before she reached the ground. “Have you seen Leo?”<br>
Kit shrugged. “The last time I saw him, he was at the library, but this close to shift-change, he’s probably in the middle of the pentagram,” she glanced to her pint-sized cousin, “Which is where you should be, Helen.”<br>
Helen sighed and orbed away from them. Chris started to follow, but a claxon sounding through the camp forced him to stand where he was and join hands with anyone standing near. With his right hand, he held onto Kit, and with his left, he clasped hands with one of the older gypsies. Together, with every other person in the camp, they recited the cloaking spell Bridget had given them, lending their power to the witches positioned at each of the five points of an imaginary pentagram that enveloped the sanctuary, and to the strongest of the six watch-keepers, Helen, positioned at the center.

“Spoken to our darkest foe:
Never see, never sense, never know.”<br>
Leo would be standing there with his niece and the person she was replacing, playing his part in this transfer of responsibility by calming her and her five partners and lending them enough mental fortitude to focus solely on holding the cloak for another four hours.

“Spoken to our darkest foe:
Never see, never sense, never know.”<br>
It was a short, simple spell -- it had to be, for well over half of the people here were children, orphans like Kit, her sister Cassie, and Helen.

“Spoken to our darkest foe:
Never see, never sense, never know.”<br>
They repeated the spell, all thousand witches in unison, until the words no longer made sense, until they meshed in a meaningless jumble of sound -- it was important that they do so, for the loss of word comprehension symbolized the confusion they were creating in Wyatt’s ability to sense them. He would be aware that somewhere there was a mother-load of magic, but he would not be able to pinpoint it. Chris had always hated being caught here during this spell, because it always filled him with a sense of awe at his brother’s power that even with this many witches working together, they did well just to keep themselves hidden.

When the spell was finished, Chris orbed to the center of the pentagram, but Leo had already left Helen alone in her trance. He walked past the gardens, where nymphs stayed busy nourishing enough food to sustain these refugees, and tried the library next, a hollowed out mound of earth that held what books Leo had been able to salvage when he evacuated Magic School. Chris found his father there, nestled on the ground among the academics who were helping him scour the tomes for a way to save Wyatt, to turn him back to the good side, to undo the damage he had done.

“Anything?” Chris asked his customary question, expecting Leo’s customary response.

“No,” he said and flipped another page.

“Got a minute?”<br>
“No,” Leo said, but then he looked up and gave a weary smile. “But that’s not likely to change. Have a seat.”<br>
Chris didn’t sit. “I just came to tell you to expect new arrivals in the next couple of days.”<br>
Leo nodded. “How many?”<br>
“I don’t know. I have to work on getting a look at the list.”<br>
“What list?”<br>
“The one that names the witches I’m supposed to kill.”<br>
The other people in the library stared up from their books, but it was a rise out of Leo that Chris was hoping for. His father stood and led him out into the open air.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Chris told him everything he had reported to Victor, except for the part about his initial crush on the woman who was to train him. He figured Leo had long ago forfeited the right to hear about that sort of thing.

“As soon as you know who the targets are, get them here.” Leo paused. “And then I want you to come and stay.”<br>
Chris cut a disbelieving glance at the Elder. “I can’t.” He motioned to the trees surrounding them. “Allergies.”<br>
“Chris, I’m serious.”<br>
“So am I,” Chris answered, but his father obviously didn’t think his sarcasm funny. “Look,” Chris started to say, but Leo interrupted him.

“No, you look. There are only two reasons Wyatt would have assigned you this task. One, he thinks you have it in you to see this through, which would make me concerned that he’s right, or two, he suspects your involvement with the Resistance and is using this as a test of your loyalty. I’m inclined to think it’s the second reason, and when you don’t kill a witch, he’s going to grill you for everything you know, and believe me, you’ll crack. In either case, the best place for you is here.”<br>
And for a minute there, Chris actually thought Leo had been talking out of concern for his second son.

“Leo, you don’t have to worry about the secret. It’ll be fine. And so will I,” he added as if it were an afterthought for him as well.

Leo caught the undercurrent of what he said. “That’s not what I meant.” Chris shook his head, but Leo continued. “You didn’t feel what those witches went through when he interrogated them. I did. They were my charges, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to help them. I don’t want to feel you go through that --”<br>
“You don’t have to make excuses,” Chris said angrily.

“I’m not. Chris, listen to me. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride.”<br>
“You think I live like this out of pride?” Chris laughed that after all these years, Leo’s ignorance could still surprise him. “You know, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t speak to Wyatt in half-truths or flat out lies. But he still knows me better than you do.” Chris left him, not even attempting to hope that those words would sting much longer than it took Leo to return to his books.

[scifi]

Exhaustion finally overcame Chris when he got home that afternoon. The result of a day and a half of non-stop meetings and alert raising was a dreamless sleep, something he never would have expected given the multitude of issues the past thirty hours had presented for his unconscious mind to process.

“Chris.”<br>
His eyes snapped open in recognition of Bianca’s voice calling him. Darkness had fallen while he slept, and it was roughly the same time of night as when he had first learned of Wyatt’s plans for him. Surely the Phoenix would not want him already -- surely a single day was not enough time to plan a murder.

“Chris,” he heard her say again, and his breathing quickened. His limbs already felt the paradox of a simultaneous numbness and pain from the adrenaline dump brought on by fear. He lay there in his bed, listening to the blood rushing in his ears, hoping against hope that her voice would not interrupt the steady beat that sounded like an army marching into battle.

“Chris.”<br>
He just wouldn’t go. That was all there was to it. He would lie there until Bianca tired of calling him. He could think of an excuse to placate Wyatt; he was good at that. And then Wyatt would see how stupid this idea was.

“Chris.”<br>
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep his teeth from chattering after an infinite cold seized him. Of course Wyatt wouldn’t take an excuse, especially if Leo was right about this being a test. Besides, his choice had been made for him long before this moment -- it had been made when he swore on his mother’s grave that he would continue her fight for the greater good, no matter what.

“It took you long enough,” Bianca said when he orbed into her apartment. He didn’t respond, but stood rigid, trying to fight down his nausea. Bianca must have noticed, because she stepped away from the gathering of three other assassins and came close enough for him to hear her gentler voice. “Deep breaths; deep breaths. Remember, make the kill quick and painless -- it’s easier that way. You barely have to think.” Then she took his arm and carried him along in her shimmer.

He knew the house they materialized in, knew of the termite problem that Victor had helped pay to fix, knew how the floorboards in the kitchen creaked, knew where the kids slept -- and he knew the witch standing at her cauldron and brewing a potion. Miranda.

Immediately, she threw the contents of her cauldron at the nearest of the Phoenix, who shimmered out of the way of the boiling substance just in time. Miranda gasped and shuddered, the indication that she was about to use her powers. Ten corporeal projections of her appeared around the room to hem the assassins in. Each of the Phoenix conjured an athame at the moment of the clones’ attack and dodged out of their group position to battle individually. In the confusion that followed, Chris lost track of which was the real Miranda, but he had little chance to worry about that as he had two versions of her coming fast, determined to make their attack on him look as real as possible.

The first Miranda landed a punch on his mouth and split his lip, drawing blood for good effect, and the second one swept his feet out from under him, causing him to fall back on his tail bone. From the floor, Chris raised his arm and threw the two women back into a wall. They vanished on impact, but two more appeared and towered over him. As he tried to stand, one of them kicked the side of her foot into his temple, sending him sprawling toward an end-table. His head hit the corner of the table just above his eyebrow, and he felt the blood run down into his eye even as he tried to clear his mind of the fuzziness the blow had caused. He wiped the blood away, and his vision cleared just enough to get an image of a Miranda about to stomp her foot into his chest. He rolled out of the way and somehow managed to get to his feet. One of the pair tried a high kick, but he caught her foot, and, adding the power of his magic to his physical strength, threw her into the other Miranda. The impact sent them both through a window, but they vanished before hitting the ground.

Chris had a brief moment to catch his breath and assess what was happening elsewhere in the room. The assassins weren’t having the same trouble he was in defending themselves, but as soon as they dispatched one clone, another took its place. They were all at a stalemate. In the middle of the room, Bianca had been caught in an awkward stance with her knife-hand held behind her back, but suddenly she shimmered behind her Miranda and slid the athame neatly across her throat. The woman disappeared beneath her hands, and Bianca, too, took a second to breathe. She didn’t notice a Miranda running toward her with an athame she had wrestled from another Phoenix; Bianca would have been an easy target for this Miranda, had Chris not instinctively raised his hand to pin her against the wall. He didn’t know why he had stopped her, but now as she dropped the athame and brought her hands to her throat as though trying to pry loose from the invisible grip, he realized the other Mirandas had disappeared as soon as she hit the wall. He had caught the real witch.

Bianca seemed as surprised as he was, but then she regained her composure. “Finish it,” she ordered softly.

Chris was shaking, but he didn’t notice. Though he was standing ten feet away from his friend, he felt her neck in his hand, felt her pulse slowing, felt her throat constrict in an unsuccessful attempt to swallow the spittle that had to run from her mouth and over her chin instead. And for a fleeting moment, he understood what true power felt like -- the kind of power his brother knew, the power over life and death.

“It’s taking too long!” he heard Bianca yell at him, and he realized he had been unconsciously tightening his grip on Miranda for several seconds. Confused by what he had been feeling, he loosened his hold. But Bianca must have taken it as an indication that he was toying with the witch, that he was more like Wyatt than she knew, for she ignited an energy ball and ended Miranda’s suffering herself.

She strode over to him and threw all her weight into hitting his jaw. “I told you quick and painless! What’s wrong with you?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, even if he had known one to give, but followed the other Phoenix out of the room. He stood there staring at Miranda’s body, at the ringed bruise that had already started to form around her neck before she died, and dared not think of anything other than naming the exact color of the bruise. But then he remembered that Miranda was not alone in the house, and that the Phoenix had not simply shimmered out after she was dead, meaning they must have had more work to do.

He ran after Bianca and her family, not bothering to search the house for them, for he knew well enough where the children would be. He burst into their bedroom just as one of the assassins was about to throw her energy ball at the seven- and three-year-old huddled inside the closet.

“No!” he screamed, and hurled the energy ball out of her hand toward the wall. They all turned to him. “Leave them.”<br>
The woman who had been about to finish the job raised an eyebrow in disbelief, and created another energy ball.

“Wait,” Bianca said, staring at Chris, at a complete loss to figure him out. “He’s right. They’re not named in the contract.”<br>
“Bianca, I think he meant the whole family.”<br>
“Then he should have specified. If he wants them dead, he can pay us accordingly.” She brought her gaze to her cousin. “Put it out.”<br>
The Phoenix hesitantly obeyed, but still voiced her protest. “I don’t think the Matriarch would --”<br>
“Then she can talk to me.” The finality in Bianca’s voice put an end to all argument, and the other members of the group shimmered out, leaving Chris and Bianca to try to comprehend each other for a long moment.

“Thanks,” he said at length.

Bianca glanced in the direction of the room where Miranda’s body lay, and the hardened look of disgust returned to her face. “Don’t thank me. You’re the one stuck figuring out what to do with them,” she said before shimmering herself.

He stood in the doorway for a minute before moving toward the closet. As soon as he extended his hand toward the children, they grasped it, for he was their mom’s friend.

The campfires at Leo’s sanctuary illuminated the thoroughfare he orbed into, but Chris needed to go no farther than the first person he saw. He handed the children over to the elderly witch. “Take them to Leo,” he said numbly, and started to turn away.

The witch held his arm and turned him around to face her. “You’re hurt,” she said, and then called for Leo.

Chris shook his head slightly when he saw his father’s orbs appear almost as an extension of the campfire’s warmth. Leo rushed to his side. “What happened?” he asked as he attempted to heal the gash on Chris’s forehead.

Chris backed away from the golden glow of Leo’s hand. He couldn’t let his father touch him, he couldn’t let his father look at him. But he brought his eyes up to Leo’s anyway, perhaps as a self-inflicted punishment, and saw there all the compassion and concern he so rarely let himself acknowledge. He bowed his head at what he saw in his father’s eyes and let out a series of raspy sobs, like someone in a consumption. When he was finally able to make some attempt at speech, it came out in the unsteady pitch of a scared little boy. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and orbed away.

[scifi]

The only thing Wyatt really missed about his mother was the fact that she could cook -- nobody around here could, that was for sure. He pushed away his plate of burned eggs and vanquished his third "chef" this week. He'd have to settle for the donut and cup of coffee he conjured for himself just before orbing to his council chambers to hear Tess's scheduled progress report.

"He didn't kill the witch," were the first words out of the Matriarch's mouth. "He came close -- he had her right there -- but Bianca said it was like he was playing with her."

"That, or he couldn't do it. Either way, he got farther than I expected. There may be hope for him yet."

Tess hesitated. "The other possibility is that he wouldn't do it. You know, of course, about the rumors --"

"And I thought I had dealt with all those who insisted on repeating them."

"I mean no disrespect," Tess said diplomatically. "You know your brother; I don't."

"I don't doubt his loyalty. Family means everything to Chris; it always has. That's why he's stayed with me even when situations have arisen that contradicted our mother's teachings."

"I understand. But have you thought of whom he will chose to ally himself with when we find the Elder? If he is to continue under our tutelage, he will learn of the contract. And if family means everything, won’t he refuse to kill his father?"

"He is to know only of the witches in whatever manner is in accordance with your code. Not one word about Leo. He's not ready for that yet."

"If I may, Wyatt, seeing how he reacts to the contract on his father would serve to confirm or quell the rumors. Hypothetically, if he were working with Leo, he would attempt to warn him."

"No. If I thought Chris could cross me, I wouldn't have your witches confirming the suspicion. Nor would you get that contract, which it seems you're after already. It's not a task I would delegate -- I owe him that much." Wyatt took a bite of his donut. "Now, what's next on your agenda?"

"He should learn to fight better than he did last night if he's going with us again. Bianca said he carried himself well enough for a novice, but as it is now, he won't stand a chance against the next witch. I'll send her to him for lessons, if you wish, but it will delay our next kill."

Wyatt nodded his approval and dismissal in the same motion, and after Tess shimmered out, he finished his donut and coffee in contemplative silence. Finally, unease got the better of him.

"Ekera," he called. The shade demon appeared and stood attentively. "I may have a job for you."

[scifi]

Bianca knew she would have to carry out Tess’s orders eventually, regardless of how much she really, really didn’t want to see Chris. When Tess had shimmered into her bathroom while she was showering on the morning after the first witch’s death, the Matriarch reiterated her approval of Bianca’s having found a loophole in the contract which allowed for the children to be targeted separately. It showed forethought and good business sense, she had said. Bianca had rolled her eyes behind the curtain, then reached out to feel for her towel to wrap around herself. When she’d stepped out of the shower, she had seen that Tess was smiling -- never a good sign.

“I want you to show Chris how to fight,” her aunt had said as she watched Bianca towel dry her hair and run a comb through it.

“I thought you wanted him trained in our way, which means he actually needs to kill his witch before he learns our tactics.”<br>
“No, in this case, it’s enough that he survived. Besides,” there was that smile again, “I would think you’d jump at the chance to go one-on-one with him. The heat, the sweat . . .”<br>
Bianca shook her head at her aunt’s heartless teasing. “That may be how you get your thrills, but it’s not my idea of a swell first date.”<br>
“Cuts out all that cheap talk, anyway. Seriously, he needs to perform better the next time he accompanies you. If he doesn’t, he’ll be a liability.”<br>
“I don’t have liabilities. He lives, or he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter to me.”<br>
“It matters to Wyatt. He’s very attached to his brother.”<br>
“That’s his problem.”<br>
“Now it’s yours,” Tess said. “You’ll train him, Bianca, to be just like you.”<br>
Bianca had tarried in fulfilling this direct order for a couple of days, making the excuse to herself that she was planning the lessons. In reality, though, she knew the reason was that she loathed the side of Chris she had seen that night, the side that seemed so accustomed to killing, Miranda’s suffering had seemed like a joy. She had expected to see some hesitation, some blunder in taking a witch’s life, but instead he had stood there trembling, his breath coming in gasps, a flush creeping into his neck and cheeks, and that oddly pained grin tugging at the corners of his mouth hinted at some orgiastic pleasure in drawing out the climax as long as possible. She didn’t think she could look at him without superimposing that expression in her mind.

So now as she finally convinced herself to begin his battle-training, she hoped he was a quick study so she could get the ordeal over with.

“Chris!” she called. There was no response, and she was unwilling to call repeatedly the way she did last time. “Don’t make me come and find you.”<br>
When he still didn’t acknowledge her call, she narrowed her eyes. “You just wait until I get my hands on you -- you won’t be able to walk for a month.” She shimmered, and figuring he was sleeping the day away, appeared in his bedroom ready to rouse him with a low power energy ball. Instead, she found him sitting in a chair before a window with the shades drawn so tight, the morning seemed like dusk. At his bedroom door, someone was urgently knocking.

“Please, Chris, open the door.” It was an old man’s voice, probably his grandfather’s. “I don’t know what happened, but we . . . we can deal with it. Please let me know what’s wrong.”<br>
Bianca extinguished her energy ball and stepped closer to where Chris sat. He never even recognized the movement.

“Chris, it’s been two days. You have to eat something,” his grandfather continued. “At least take some water.”<br>
Bianca stood in front of Chris, but he didn’t look up at her. His eyes stared at nothing, blank like a dead man’s, but with the same intensity. It was as if he were watching some projected scene play over and over on the blinds.

“Chris, you can’t shut yourself off like this. I can help.” The old man sounded desperate.

Bianca could read him now, not haltingly, like he was written in some foreign, half-familiar language, but fluently, like he was written in her own hand. She had misjudged him entirely.

“I don’t know what to do here, Chris. Help me out.” His grandfather jiggled the door handle for what must have been the hundredth time.

She got down on her knees and reached hesitantly for his hand, remembering how he had recoiled the last time she tried to touch him. But he did nothing now as she cradled his palm with her own, taking away some of the iciness in it with the warmth from hers. With her other hand, she brushed the hair out of his face and fingered the area around the scab that ran above his eye. He had let the wound get infected, but now that she was here, she would make sure it healed properly. She felt down along his features, found he had a beard well on its way to completion, and turned her hand over to stroke his cheek with the back side of her fingers. He finally blinked and brought his eyes over to meet hers, and she saw there the beginning of fresh tears to match her own. She took a breath and swallowed.

“Come with me,” she whispered, and shimmered with him to her spot.

[scifi]

Bianca and Chris appeared behind a statue of an angel just in case anyone was around to see them, but of course, nobody ever came here. Bianca had always wondered why, since this was, to her, the most beautiful spot in the arboretum, encircled by angelic statues, marble columns, and most importantly of all, the flowers, those crucial reminders of life among the all the death that she encountered -- that she caused. She led him to a bench nestled in the midst of the natural and artificial splendor and tenderly sat him down. He was shielding his eyes against the sudden glare of the morning light, but she brought his hands down and held them.

“Open your eyes, Chris; take it all in.”<br>
He did as she requested, but after glancing at one of the angels, he shut his eyes again. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked with a voice hoarse from disuse.

Bianca sighed and sat on the bench beside him. “To get you out of that chair, for one thing.” She conjured a cloth and bowl of water to set nearby, dipped the cloth into the water, and forced Chris’s face in her direction. The cloth must have been comforting to the touch, because a few of the lines around his eyes softened as she ran it delicately over the wound on his forehead, barely massaging loose the caked blood. She rinsed the cloth and repeated the process, moving it down over his eyelid and the side of his face where the blood had left a trail and dried. His skin was too fair to be discolored so.

“How old are you, Chris?” she asked after a moment.

“Nineteen.”<br>
She shook her head. “I was sixteen my first time. I had almost forgotten how it feels.”<br>
She wrung some fresh water out of the cloth and wiped it over the rest of his face, not so much because he was dirty, but because she knew how consoling the gesture could be; she wished someone had shown her this sympathy once upon a time. He was staring at her now a bit unnervingly as she rubbed the cloth ever so slowly at the back of his neck where her fingers felt the tips of his hair grow more damp with each pass. She brought the cloth to his throat, perceived his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed, then moved her hand down over his collar bone to the area of his chest exposed by the unfastened top two buttons of his shirt.

He stopped her hand there after a moment, the pressure forcing a couple of droplets of water from the cloth to run down her arm to her elbow. She noticed he was unconsciously tracing slow, small circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. “How do you do it?” he asked.

She could feel his heart beating as she stared back into his eyes and never wanted to move her hand away. But his question deserved an honest answer, and to formulate one that didn’t seem glib, that could conceivably convey how she could bring herself to murder complete strangers for money, required her to concentrate. She pulled away from him and searched the skies for words.

“Logically, I know they’re going to die anyway. If they’ve been targeted, someone is going to get the contract, so I try to make sure it’s me.” She closed her eyes against their burning sensation. “Quick and painless, like I told you, not just so you don’t have to think about it, but because I don’t want them to feel anything, either. If I don’t do it, someone else will, someone who doesn’t care.”<br>
“Like me,” Chris reminded her of what she had believed about him.

“No,” she breathed. “I didn’t know then that this was why --” her voice caught at the remembrance of that night. “But a reaction like yours was another thing I had to train myself to avoid. You can’t think of the people as people. You can’t let any emotions get in the way. You go crazy if you do. Everything -- pity, remorse, sympathy, guilt -- everything . . . You have to turn it all off.”<br>
Chris stared at the ground, hesitating to speak. “What about …” He looked like was about to cry again. “What about pleasure?”<br>
She was about to join him; as she analyzed her motives, as she remembered her first time, she realized why she had been so angry with him that night -- she had once allowed herself to become intoxicated by the power-lust, too.

“Chris, look at me. It’s normal. It really is. You just --” she took a deep breath, “You have to turn that off, too. If you don’t, you become like --” She had gone too far.

“Like Wyatt,” he finished for her.

She stared at him, momentarily unsure of him again, but reassured that he meant nothing more than the truth, she nodded. “Yeah.”<br>
“So how do you turn it off?”<br>
She shook her head. “It takes time -- mostly through practice, force of will.” She paused. “You ever read any Shakespeare?”<br>
Chris shook his head.

“Well, there’s a line in Macbeth. He was a good man who became obsessed with ruling Scotland -- killed his king and his friend, so that he could steal and keep the crown. And when he realized what he had become he said, ‘I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er.’”

Chris turned his gaze on her, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “How far are we in?”<br>
Bianca’s breath caught in her chest, and despite her every attempt to stop it, a tear spilled from the rim of her eye. She wiped it away before Chris could see it, and then stood up with a resolve not to think about this topic anymore. “I have to train you to fight; we’ll start tomorrow. Come on. Today, you need to eat. Get your strength back up, because you’re going to need it.”<br>

[scifi]

What Cole wouldn’t give for an Oracle or a Seer right now. But apparently their kind were nearing extinction in this time, probably because Wyatt wouldn’t stand being told what to do, so this Delphian would have to serve, however mediocre his abilities were.

“Last chance, Pyth,” Cole said. He had roughed the spindly demon up a bit with no success, but he figured a couple of minutes teetering on the brink of Hell might get some answers. So he’d shimmered to this ledge, the perfect ledge, with an expansive view of the lake of fire, where the heat was particularly intense and the air was infused with precisely the right amount of eau d’ brimstone.

“You can send me down there,” Pyth attempted a haughty tone, “But I expect Wyatt will send you after me soon enough.”<br>
“Maybe. But here’s what’s wrong with your argument,” Cole said as though he were in a courthouse discussing jurisprudence with a bunch of lawyer buddies on a lunch break. “One, I’ve already been there, and two, there is nothing to keep me in this world anymore. So, the fear of Hell’s pretty much been driven out of me.” Cole leaned the demon slightly further over the edge. “You, on the other hand, are probably thinking of the many possible ways that Hell can hurt. Well, believe me, it hurts in ALL those ways.” He paused to let his words, and the up-close view, sink in. “Count of three, Pyth. One…”

“If I try to sense his plan, he’ll know it. He’ll kill me!”<br>
“Again, that’s a maybe. But if you don’t sense what he’s up to, I will most certainly throw you in. Two…” He held on to Pyth’s shirt with his fingertips.

“All right! All right! I’ll try!”<br>
Cole pulled him up to a less precarious place on the ledge, but still clutched his shirt front just in case he needed to send Pyth suddenly over the edge. The clairvoyant tried to wrench himself loose, but finding Cole infinitely stronger than himself, settled down and closed his eyes in concentration. After a few moments, Pyth spoke. “He wants the mortal world.”<br>
“Yeah, I know. He wants me to infiltrate and collect power --”<br>
“No.” Pyth frowned, trying to decipher the images he was seeing. “It’s going to be sudden, apocalyptic. He just wanted you in place as a human-demon liaison after it’s all over.” Pyth seemed as curious as Cole now about what he was sensing. “But the witches are in his way.”<br>
“What witches?”<br>
“The Resistance. He’s afraid of them. Obsessed with finding them. I see a contract -- two of them. For witches and . . . someone else.”<br>
“What are their names? Who has the contracts?”<br>
“I can’t see the names. They’ve already killed one, though. The Phoenix. And . . .” Pyth seemed impressed by this new image. “They’re training Chris. That‘ll take some doing.”<br>
“Who’s Chris?”<br>
Before Pyth could answer, his face contorted in the all too familiar expression of a vanquish. Cole let go of his shirt just before Pyth exploded in a brief burst of flames.

“That’s just great! Thank you!” Cole yelled in annoyance to the chasm walls as if Wyatt were there to hear him. “Now I gotta go find another one.”<br>

[scifi]

Instead of heeding the advice Bianca gave him before abruptly shimmering out of the arboretum with the expectation of him following her, Chris orbed to the Underworld, searching for his brother. When he finally found Wyatt in the abandoned lair of a long-vanquished demon, he stood for several moments in the entrance waiting for him to acknowledge his presence. But Wyatt was too engrossed in a ritual to notice.

“Obey my words, ye powers of yore:
Demon three witches did abhor,
Fettered now by death and pain,
Break the bonds, your life regain.”<br>
A red flash appeared in a door made of poppies, and Wyatt repeated the spell. He was actually doing it -- actually resurrecting demons. Chris thought briefly that he ought to feel some kind of amazement, but nothing Wyatt did surprised him anymore.

But then a new idea replaced that pessimism, an idea born of recklessness or, more likely, the suicidal mood that had brought him here in the first place. Wyatt’s spell required enormous concentration; that much was obvious. If Chris could get to the Book while he was preoccupied . . .

It rested on a pedestal near Wyatt’s bed, enveloped in a blue iridescent force field, the triquetra emblazoned on a green background, its perfect form unchanged as long as there was still one good witch in the Halliwell line. For a split second, his heart lightened, but then he reminded himself that all the goodness in his family lay in his cousins.

He moved closer, careful not to disturb the force field, for since Evil was no longer barred from touching the Book, Wyatt had needed to enact his own version of protection in case any demons got curious -- if anybody touched it, he would know about it.

Chris’s magical gesture to open the cover revealed a gentleness in his power that he’d not been able to display in a long time. Here was something that deserved his awe and reverence. How many times had his mother or aunts slammed that cover shut and declared the Book stupid or useless -- how many times had he done it himself before it became an untouchable thing? But somehow, they had always returned to it, just as he was returning to it now, because even when it held no answers to their questions, in their most desperate hours, its mere existence gave them a chance.

As the invisible fingers of his mind flipped through the pages, however, Chris realized that even the Book of Shadows wasn’t immune to Wyatt’s changes. Alongside the entries about vanquishing demons -- some written in the elaborate calligraphy of three-hundred years of witches, some written in his mother’s script, Paige’s scribble, or Phoebe’s print -- were entries for vanquishing beings of light, personal gain spells, and rituals with illustrations so much darker than any he remembered from his childhood. He tried to ignore them and focused on finding the entry he needed before Wyatt returned.

Gremlins, Whitelighters, Time Travel, Banshees -- The Phoenix. Here it was. Through the swirling blue haze, he read the description of the assassin witches that told him nothing he didn’t already know. He flipped over to the back of the page where the ingredients for the vanquishing potion were listed. He reviewed them several times, committing them to memory, occasionally forcing away images of Bianca going up in flames lest the conflicting emotions they stirred throw him off his determined course. Some of the ingredients were pretty rare these days, and his grandfather would have to pull some strings to get them, but once he did, at least the witches the Phoenix were targeting would be able to defend themselves.

Suddenly, the Book closed without Chris having willed it.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt asked.

Chris continued staring at the Book that was no longer his. “Checking out who you’ve got me dealing with.”<br>
Wyatt nodded and walked further into the room with the demon he’d just resurrected trailing close behind. “Demon-witches. Hybrids like us. That’s why I like them so much better than other assassins.” He paused. “You could have just asked me.”<br>
Chris glanced from the new demon to Wyatt. “You were busy.” Before Wyatt could reply Chris’s apparent death wish forced out the question he had come to the Underworld to ask. “Why are you making me do this? I don’t even like hunting demons -- I only do it to protect you. What makes you think I’d like killing witches any better?”<br>
“Getting all pacifistic on me?” Wyatt grinned. “You know, for someone who’s spent his whole life insisting on being called a witch, you sure do sound like a whitelighter.” Wyatt always had known exactly where Chris’s buttons were.

“Shut up.”<br>
The grin vanished from Wyatt’s face, but he looked more annoyed than angry as he formed an energy ball and flung it at his brand new minion who had the misfortune to hear the exchange. “Don’t talk to me like that, especially in front of demons.”<br>
Wyatt stepped away from the pile of ash and, taking on a demeanor of disappointment mixed with understanding, held on to his brother’s shoulder. “You’re still thinking of them as innocents, Chris, like they have some kind of inherent worth. And you think you’re evil for what you almost did. But you can’t think like that. How many times do I have to tell you that evil doesn’t exist?” His smile was genuine as he let go Chris’s shoulder and paced the room in lecture mode. “And even if it did, you’re far from it. You know the value of family. You’ve stuck by me when nobody else would -- you’re the only one who has an inkling of how hard it is --” Wyatt stopped himself. “That’s why I want you to do this for me, so we can continue to stick together.” He shrugged and said what was, to him, so obvious as to be ridiculous to doubt. “We’re brothers; that’s what brothers do.”<br>
Chris watched as Wyatt crossed the room again and stood before him, the Book wedged between them. Wyatt’s eyes went up to Chris’s wound. “Here,” he said, and raised his hand to his brother’s forehead. Chris closed his eyes and sighed as he felt the warmth from Wyatt’s healing power closing the gash, repairing the skin like it had never been broken, and he thought of Leo’s explanation of the trigger, of how Wyatt’s ability to heal was the only thing that kept their father’s quest to save him alive. If Wyatt could heal, he could love. And if he could love, there was hope.

[scifi]

Victor was sitting in his recliner waiting for Chris when he finally came back home. The orbs had barely solidified into a figure before his Grandpa was attempting to stand and speak at the same time, but Chris held up a finger to indicate that he needed a minute, and rushed past Victor and into the kitchen. He ripped a sheet from the pad they used for grocery lists and scavenged a drawer for a pen. Having found one, he sat down at the table and frenetically started writing down the recipe for the Phoenix vanquishing potion before he could forget any of the ingredients or steps.

Victor followed several moments behind and silently watched his grandson’s latest fit of obsessive behavior play itself out. Instead of disturbing Chris immediately, he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a sandwich he had made and wrapped up earlier in the day in hopes of getting Chris to eat. He placed it on a saucer, poured some apple juice into a glass of ice like he had done when Chris was a small child and Piper had asked him to babysit, and set both down on the table where Chris could see them. The young man reached for the drink and downed it without much thought, dehydration getting the better of him, though he didn’t stop writing, nor would he look up into his grandfather’s face, even when Victor refilled the glass.

“Leo’s been here,” Victor said quietly. That stopped Chris’s pen.

“What?” Chris cried incredulously. “He left them unprotected?”<br>
“They protect themselves; Leo’s only there for support. If I were you, I would have been more worried about him exposing his own whereabouts rather than theirs.”<br>
Chris continued writing, pretending that Victor‘s statement held no semblance of an admonishment. “Why did he pick now to come?”<br>
“Apparently, you’ve been ignoring his calls for two days, as well.” Again, there was that sub-textual tone of a mild scolding, but there was no hint of accusation in Victor’s next statement. “Cassie had a vision . . . of you at Miranda’s.” He paused at the remembrance of Leo’s retelling of what the most sensitive Halliwell had seen. “We know what happened.”<br>
Chris let the pen rest in one spot for so long, a blot began to appear. “She saw?”<br>
“And felt. Everything from your point of view.”<br>
Chris sat back from the table. His tears were spent, and now he just wanted to hurt something, to hurt himself. Why was it that his reaction had gone so suddenly from sorrow to destruction? But then, why not destruction -- that was what he did now.

“The Universe is a pretty sadistic place to force premonitions and empathy on a ten-year-old,” was the only response he could muster.

“And to force a nineteen-year-old to live the real thing,” Victor added.

Chris started writing again, as though the action would make his grandfather see how little he deserved pity. “So, what . . . did he come to yell at me?”<br>
“No. He’s worried about you.”<br>
“Well, he’s just full of surprises today.”<br>
“He wants you to stay with him at the sanctuary --”<br>
“So he can keep an eye on me.”<br>
“So he can protect you.” Victor sat down across the table from Chris and absorbed the angry silence that indicated that the boy wouldn’t dare believe what he’d said. “Chris, I can’t begin to defend him for what he did to your mother and you boys. But I can’t judge him either, because I did the same thing to my family, and my reasons don’t even compare.”

Chris found the association almost laughable -- the Elder who had claimed eternal love for Piper and her sons, yet showed that love in no discernable way for over a decade, juxtaposed with the man who had sat up holding a nightmare-plagued fourteen-year-old nearly every night for six months after his mother died.

“But he’s trying to be there for you now,” Victor continued. “You need somebody there for you. He loves you, Chris.” Victor maneuvered to force Chris to look at him. “He still loves you. He doesn’t want that to ever happen to you again.”<br>
“It won’t happen again.” Chris finished the recipe and pushed it across the table. “You find those ingredients, and the problem’s solved.”<br>
Victor read over the slip of paper. “Where did you get this?”<br>
“Where do you think?”<br>
Victor frowned and shook his head. “We can’t use it. Not now. Wyatt will know.”<br>
“I don’t care.”<br>
The declaration worried Victor more than anything Chris had done in the past two days -- he knew from the look in his eyes that he meant it in every possible way. “I want you to take Leo up on his offer,” he said.

“No. It’s like you said, I have to keep you informed --”<br>
“Forget what I said.” Victor stood up. “For once in your life, will you stop thinking about everyone else and start thinking about your own safety? You’re just like your mother --”<br>
“I know!” Chris yelled suddenly. “That’s what got her killed -- that’s what’s going to get me killed. I know. You’ve told me a million times.” His voice became chilly, something it never did when he spoke to Victor. “But you don’t mind so much when I bring you something useful.”<br>
If Victor had stopped to think about it, he would have realized he was falling into the same trap of misinterpretation that Chris used for Leo. “Of course we need you. But not at such a risk. That’s your problem, Chris. You rush headlong into things without a thought of the danger to yourself. You don’t think!”<br>
“I have thought more in the last two days than I have in my whole life. Don’t tell me I don’t think.”<br>
Victor finally caught on to what his grandson was doing, and he wouldn’t be party to his self-depredation. Instead of continuing the argument as Leo would have done, Victor simply tore up the recipe.

“What are you doing?” Chris shot up from his chair.

“I’m not going to use this. At the meeting, Bridget told us she found a potion that might work instead.”<br>
“Mine’s guaranteed!”<br>
“You may not care about your life, but I do. And if you won’t stay with Leo, I’m going to make sure you don’t get yourself killed with this.”<br>
Chris dropped back into his chair in defeat, but Victor wouldn’t let him feel sorry for himself about that, either. He walked behind Chris’s chair and placed a hand on top of his head, again thinking back to when he was a little boy, and he smiled. “Believe it or not, there are some people in this world who would like to see you make it to twenty-five.”

[scifi]

Day 1

Bianca shimmered into Chris’s bedroom for the second time in as many days, but this time she hadn’t waited for the sun to come up. She flicked on the light switch and watched as Chris rolled over in bed and put a pillow over his head. She couldn’t help but smile before she caught herself and muttered, “Turn it off.”<br>
“Get up,” she ordered as she snatched away the pillow and threw back his cover. He groaned a bit, but she could understand why -- this was probably the first time he’d been able to really sleep in days.

“You ready?” she persisted, though the question was redundant. Apparently, the night before, he had finally shaved and cleaned up, and he had slept in day clothes in anticipation of this very awakening.

Chris glanced at her through squinted eyes. “Do I have a choice?”<br>
Bianca just folded her arms in front of her chest and waited. He stood up slowly, as though only a couple of days of inactivity had weakened his muscles, and picked up the alarm clock to check the time.

“Three in the morning?” he yelped. “Are you insane?”<br>
“No,” she said simply. “I’m just burdened with an impossibly tight schedule to do an impossibly difficult job.”<br>
“Oh, you just fill me with confidence.”<br>
She rolled her eyes and took his arm. “Come on.”<br>
“It takes years to fight like us, Chris,” she explained as they shimmered to the training area. “We don’t have that kind of time, so you get the crash course, and we’ll hope you pick up on what you can.” Bianca turned on the lights, conjured a small but thick book, and began thumbing through it.

“What’s that?” Chris asked.

“My grimiore.”<br>
“What are you going to do?” he asked as he began looking around at their surroundings.

“You’ll see.”<br>
Chris decided it would be best to leave Bianca to her book, and walked through the rooms of the training area. He had expected something close to a gym -- maybe a large open space for sparring, some strength training equipment lined along a wall, perhaps some weapons in storage. But this place was nothing like he imagined. It was just an empty house, a cape cod, no less, with picture perfect walls and carpet, and stairs in both the foyer and kitchen for easy access to children’s bedrooms. He glanced out one of the windows. The sun was beginning to come up here, so he could tell they were pretty far east of San Francisco, and in the growing light he saw that the house was situated in the middle of a field, with no other house in view-- they wouldn’t have to worry about the noise, anyway. He shook his head at the appearance of the place -- had it not been so early in the morning, he would have half-expected a real estate agent to come through the front door to show a young couple their dream home.

Chris came full circle and back into the room where Bianca stood. “Found it,” she said to herself, and then began reading.

“‘A place for everything, and everything in its place:’<br>Words to live by, and this emptiness to erase.”<br>
The space instantly transformed into a comfortably furnished den, complete with fine upholstery on the couch and chairs, tall, expensive-looking lamps, state-of-the-art computer and TV holographic consoles, and various knick-knacks scattered around the room and arranged in a curio cabinet. He glanced through to another room, where an elegant dining table with place settings had appeared, flanked by a side-boy with a silver tea service and a china cabinet filled with crystal. What must the other rooms look like?

“My mom wrote that spell,” Bianca said proudly. “Pretty impressive for just a few words, huh?”<br>
It had been a long time since Chris had been amazed by anyone, but she had done it. “Pretty -- wow,” he laughed, and wondered why his family always seemed to be the only witches in the world hindered by personal gain consequences.

“She liked nice things,” Bianca explained, and then turned the page in the grimiore. “You have to read this one with me. And when you get to the ‘his/her’ part, you’ll just say ‘her,’ and I’ll say ‘his,’ and, well, you get it.” She held the book so he could see, and they began reading.

“Pain of death, and nothing more
For the duration of this chore.
Illusion of conflict, for the sake of prey
To save his/her life another day.”<br>
There was no spectacle with that spell, and Chris didn’t feel any different, so… “What did that do?” he asked.

Bianca made the grimiore vanish and looked him up and down. “If I’m right, you’ll find out in just a minute. Now, The Charmed Ones -- the most powerful sisters ever -- they had to teach you something, right?”<br>
“Well, yeah. Of course.”<br>
“About fighting?”<br>
“Yeah,” Chris answered arrogantly, but then he saw Bianca smile like she was expecting an elaboration that would negate his bravado. “A little.” She was still smiling. “Okay, they tried to keep me away from all that. But Phoebe did teach me how to throw and take a punch -- and to duck…” He wished she’d stop smiling. “And weave . . . And roll out of the way, since I spent most of the time on the ground. Happy now?”<br>
“Not really,” she answered, but at least she stopped smiling. “Just makes my job harder.” She moved closer to him. “Let’s see how well you took your lessons. Hit me.”<br>
Chris hesitated, having been caught off guard by the abruptness with which she had changed demeanors.

“Hit me,” she insisted. “Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”<br>
He decided to go in with a left jab, but when he did so, he exposed his side to attack, one of the many possible mistakes Bianca had anticipated him making. Before he was able to make contact, she had time to dodge the punch, conjure an athame, and plunge it into his gut.

“You’re dead,” she said as she pulled out the athame and stepped back. Had he not been consumed by the pain of a dissected intestine, Chris might have noticed the blade was clean, with no blood, no bile to stain it, and he might have noticed Bianca’s brief struggle not to react to his suffering. As it was, his knees buckled at the weakness caused by an overdose of adrenaline and endorphins rushing through his system in a vain effort to alleviate the agony of waste emptying into his abdominal cavity. He lay on his side, clawing at the floor, willing himself to stop dry-heaving because it only pumped his abdomen fuller of his own body’s poison. Then, just as he was about to lose consciousness, the pain began to subside. So this was what it was like to die -- the pain was only while you were still alive. This last part wasn’t so bad.

But then he opened his eyes, and he wasn’t dead. He stared at the carpet fibers beneath his eyes, then felt with his hand where the athame had entered his body. There was no wound there -- his shirt wasn’t even torn. He sat up slowly, unsure of whether his equilibrium could support the movement, and looked to Bianca. She had turned her back on him, but now that all was quiet, she faced him again.

“Under normal circumstances, I would have slit your throat as soon as you went down,” she said quietly. “But you needed to know what the spell does. As long as you are in this house, you can’t be literally hurt. For every punch or kick or . . .” she sighed, “Fatal wound, your body’s senses will mimic the effect -- mine will, too. You’ll feel it, but it won’t be real. It’s meant to give you a taste of what you’re trying to avoid.” She paused. “If you fail to defend yourself properly, you will die several times before we’re done. But I promise you, never again like that. There is no more painful and lasting wound . . .

“Now, stand up,” she instructed. “We’ll try it again, and think about what you did wrong.”<br>
“No way.” Chris did stand up, but he backed away from Bianca. “There is no way I’m doing that again.”<br>
“Fine.” Bianca placed her hands on her hips. “Then I’ll tell the others we move on the target tomorrow, and you’ll go with us, and you’ll die. For real.”<br>
“Maybe. But at least that’s a one-time thing.”<br>
“Chris --”<br>
But he was too angry at what she’d sprung on him to listen to her reason her way into killing him repeatedly. And he wasn’t as helpless as she believed. He motioned to throw her into the TV, but she shimmered instead of crashing, and before he could do anything more, she was behind him with one hand at the side of his head, and the other positioned below his chin. “I apply pressure counter-clockwise, and your neck’s broken. You’re dead. Again.”<br>
She released him, but he pushed her away, determined not to let her near him again. He tried orbing, but she was able to make a grab at him before he turned completely into light, forcing him to corporealize. She threw him into a coffee table, which splintered beneath him.

“Will you please stop?” she yelled.

But he rushed her instead. She had no choice but to force him back down into the splintered wood, impaling him on a table leg. She kneeled over him, and before gliding her athame across his throat, shook her head and said, “You’re dead again.”<br>
Chris put his hands at his neck to stop the non-existent blood from spilling out, and Bianca grabbed his locked elbows and pulled him off the table leg. As soon as the pain stopped, he slapped her away, but his hand had barely made contact with her face before she had swept his legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor.

“You have died three times in the last five minutes. Now, you’re going to listen to me if I have to kill you all day long. I’m trying to save your life, here.”<br>
He struggled to push her off him, but to no avail. Finally, he lay still, his teeth and fists clenched. She loosened her grip on him, though she did not get off him completely.

[scifi]

“It was pure luck that you survived the witch’s attack. Your fighting is sloppy, haphazard, and completely instinctive. You have no tactical forethought -- you don’t anticipate your opponent, but simply react. I have no idea how you’ve survived this long. Demon hunter? I suspect you could take nothing more than a lower level demon, unless you get a stronger demon to help you with the vanquish. Or more likely, you call big brother Wyatt once you’ve found the threat, you little ferret.” She stood up and backed away, assessing his prone position. “But by all means, get up and rush me again. And I’ll kill you again. Or better yet, run away, and I’ll take you tomorrow to end your miserable little life.”<br>
Chris looked up at her for a long minute before he stood as well. But he didn’t rush her; he stared at the floor and waited.

Bianca let out a breath and stepped toward him. “Eye contact,” she said, and he obeyed by bringing his gaze up to hers. She continued with her instruction. “Now, first, we’ll work on balance, because you really do spend too much time on the ground.”<br>

Day 2

Dusk was falling on the second day, and Bianca longed to take a shower in her own bathroom and to crawl between the sheets of her own bed. But, no, the rules of training that had been in place for generations dictated that, with the exception of inspections by the Matriarch, she and her student could have no outside contact for the duration of training. Thirty days in this house with Chris should have been feeling manageable compared to the two years she had once spent with Tess, but she was already so tired. She dared not think how tired Chris was. Training had progressed so little that she had no fear of turning her back on him to switch on a lamp, even if in his recklessness he seemed to have thought this whole day that he could somehow catch her by surprise. Hopefully, she had broken him of that habit. She didn’t know how much more either of them could take today.

“Explain distances to me again,” she ordered.

“Ideal fighting distances depend on height,” Chris intoned.

“And because you’re taller, your attacks rely on?”<br>
“Kicks, quick punches, and keeping you at bay,” he said lifelessly.

Bianca nodded. “And because I’m shorter, I’ll . . .?”<br>
“Try to move in under my guard, get close, maybe go for my legs, get me on the ground where I can’t have the advantage of height.”<br>
“Remember your defense -- Don’t let me in.”<br>
“Oh,” he smiled sarcastically, “I think I’ll remember that very well.”<br>
“Then let’s try it. Do not let me in,” she reiterated.

She shimmered and reappeared inside his zone, but this was a move he had expected. He brought his knee up into her stomach and followed through with a fist to the side of her head, which knocked her to the ground a couple of feet away. Instead of attacking her while she was down, Chris waited a split second to see what she would do, his strategy having been planned only up to the point where he got her away. In that time, Bianca caught his ankle between her feet and yanked him off balance, and he joined her on the floor. But just as she lunged to drive her elbow into his windpipe, he rolled out of the way and barely registered the crunch of Bianca’s elbow breaking as it missed its target. He didn’t expect her to be standing, too, when he got to his feet, but there she was, inside his zone, the heel of her palm making contact with his nose and sending imaginary shards of bone into his brain. Death would have been almost instantaneous, so Chris recovered from his pain before Bianca was able to move her elbow again. When he came to his senses, she was still holding it against her body with one hand and pacing the opposite end of the room, talking to herself.

“I can’t believe they left him so raw! He probably picked up whatever he could from those moronic bottom-feeders he hunts, but not nearly enough. Maybe if they had lived longer . . . I could just kill whatever demon vanquished them . . . but then, next to Wyatt, they probably thought, ‘What’s the point?’ But coddling him was the worst thing they could do. He’s so weak compared to Wyatt, they should have trained more, not less. Stupid witches!”<br>
“Hey!” Chris yelled, but Bianca wasn’t too upset that he’d been awake to hear her tirade. Maybe he needed to hear it, like he needed to hear a lot of things. She forced the pain out of her elbow and flexed it roughly out to the side.

“However perfect you may think they were, they couldn’t do everything right.”<br>

Day 5

Recovering from a throw had been today’s lesson, and since Chris caught on quickly, Bianca had started the next day’s instruction and allowed him to flip her over onto the ground since noon. She had warned him not to get too pleased with himself, had even said he was enjoying it too much, but she couldn’t exactly blame him -- she’d hate her, too. She’d really hate her for what she was about to do.

“Okay, one more time before bed. I’m coming at you, but be ready for anything this time.”<br>
Chris nodded, and Bianca rushed him. He flipped her over his back as he had done a hundred times before, but as she landed, she formed an energy ball and shot it toward his face. He was thrown back into a wall, screaming as he felt his flesh melt away. She stood up and started ascending the stairs to her room while he recovered from the pain. Before she was halfway up, however, her feet left the steps and she went flying into the wall at the top of the stairs. She looked down to where Chris had assumed a fighting stance at the bottom.

“Orbing and shimmering. You said that was the only magic for a week!” he shouted.

Bianca picked herself up. “You expect someone who’s trying to kill you to tell the truth?” She left him with that, and limped gingerly down the hall to her room.


Day 8

Bianca sat astride his chest and leaned over to put her athame to his throat. But instead of the customary “You’re dead” before letting it slide, she repeated the phrase she had said the first day. “I’m trying to save your life.”<br>
Chris didn’t let her finish him this time, however. He shifted and used that leg strength she kept harping about to buck her off and over, so that now, their positions were reversed, with him resting his weight closer to her pelvis because of the height difference. He had both her wrists in his hands, and using his thumb to apply pressure where she had instructed, he cut off the circulation in her knife hand, causing her grip to falter and the athame to fall away and disappear before clattering to the floor.

Bianca stopped moving beneath him and simply blinked, looking as surprised as he was at what he had been able to do. He released her wrists, and still she didn’t attempt to fight him.

She had the most beautiful face.

With both hands, he gently smoothed back her disheveled hair. “Who’s going to save you?” he asked, but his voice sounded distant, like it came from outside himself, from something larger than himself. He continued stroking her hair as she closed her eyes against the tears that were starting there and turned her face away to stare at the sign of her bloody heritage that seemed as much a disfigurement of her wrist as a burned-on brand. He followed her gaze and her thoughts, and then ran his hands over her shoulders and along the inside of her arms, coming to a stop at her own hands, where his arm blocked her view of the birthmark and their fingers intertwined. She squeezed his hands, her fingers pressing into the spaces between his knuckles, and again her eyes met his. He stretched her arms above her head to allow himself enough leverage to bring his face close to hers, close to her honey-colored skin. Finding that honey filled his thoughts. He tasted first at her neck -- the bitterness of blood. His kiss brushed her cheek -- the saltiness of tears. Finally, his lips covered her mouth -- there it was.

And then Chris woke up. Aching and rigid, he lay in bed and tried to force himself to calm down, which was not an easy task when he was becoming more and more angry with his Unconscious with every second that passed. That dream was totally unacceptable -- Bianca had started killing him a week ago and hadn’t stopped since. His pet wish for that whole week had been for a stockpile of vanquishing potion so he could watch her repeatedly erupt into very hot, very painful flames. There was no way he was going to let something as flimsy as a dream deprive him of that satisfaction. Whenever an image came to mind of what might have happened if he hadn’t stopped the dream, he thought of a way to vanquish her. If their kiss deepened, he opened one eye and motioned for a vial to come flying at her. If one of his hands moved down her body, the other reached for that little glass bottle. His fantasies alternated between passions until he was convinced that the dream would not come again if he slept.

But in the midst of letting consciousness slip away, when he entered that hazy in-between state where memory conveniently followed judgment’s lead and lapsed, he wondered vaguely if, in the next room, she was dreaming of him.

[scifi]

Day 10

“Incapacitation is the word for the day,” Bianca had said that morning, and she wasn’t kidding. Though he had not died, Chris wished he had -- death never lasted as long as what she had done to him today.

Their latest fight had gone on for a full two minutes, and he was still standing. He suspected that Bianca secretly wanted to tell him he was doing a good job, having progressed to two minutes after his abysmal six-second showing on the first day. He had caught her smiling at some of his actions, and not in that mocking way that provoked him.

But two minutes would have to stand as his record, because this time, Bianca’s incapacitating move involved grabbing his crotch from behind and giving it a twist. All the breath burst from his lungs as he went to his knees and over on his side. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have to worry about interrupting any wet dreams this night.

Bianca started to go in for a follow-up blow, but he took one of his hands away from the source of pain and warded her off. “I’m dead!” he gasped. “I’m dead!”<br>

Day 11

Bianca strangled him with an electrical cord. “You’re dead,” she declared.

Day 12

Chris crashed into the china cabinet, which then fell over and emptied its broken crystal into his body. “You’re dead,” Bianca sighed. “That is not going to be fun to pick out.”<br>
Day 13

“Are you ever going to stop dying?” Bianca fumed as she pulled an Eiffel Tower figurine out of his spine and placed it back in the curio.

Day 15

Bianca was pouring herself a glass of orange juice when she glanced up and saw Tess standing in the kitchen doorway. Odd that she hadn’t sensed her aunt shimmer. She must have been more exhausted than she knew.

“Late start this morning?” the Matriarch asked.

Bianca took a sip and shook her head as she sat down at the breakfast table. “No. Spell-casting today. I sent Chris to his room with an hour to write a spell and implement a strategy to go with it. I figure I have time yet for some cereal.”<br>
“Mind if I join you?”<br>
Bianca waved her hand toward the refrigerator to grant permission, as though her aunt needed it. Tess picked up a grapefruit from the fruit bowl on the counter and pulled a knife and utensils from a drawer. Bianca watched her cut the fruit -- there was something not quite right about the way she was holding the knife.

“How is Chris progressing?”<br>
“Well, I don’t think he’ll get any of us killed,” Bianca answered. “But anything more, I can’t guarantee.”<br>
“It’s early yet,” Tess said through a mouthful of fruit. Bianca forced herself not to smile.

“Halfway, and we’re only now at spell-casting. You know how much I have yet to show him. I don’t know -- this may be as good as he’ll ever get.”<br>
“You still have time. You never know -- he may just surprise you.” Tess was talking with her hands. “Don’t just assume there’s nothing more he can learn.” Rather, she was talking almost exclusively with her right hand.

Tess brought her grapefruit and utensils to the table and sat beside Bianca, who noticed her hand never left the knife’s handle even after she’d set it down. Bianca rose and went to the counter, picking an apple out of the bowl and grabbing her own knife to peel it.

“Maybe you’re right, but I’m thinking he’s just too much of a whitelighter.”<br>
Tess started to speak, glanced to the left as though searching for a careful reply, then found her words. “I always understood that he lives as a witch.”<br>
“Let him live however he wants, but apparently, there’s more of his father in him than he lets on.” Bianca looked for a reaction, and Tess’s silent attack on the grapefruit was all she needed.

“Besides, you know what I always say.” Bianca put a slice of apple in her mouth. “You’re dead.”<br>
The knife flew from her hand and into Tess’s chest, but instead of seeing her aunt fall back in the chair, Bianca watched Chris sprawl onto the floor. She rolled her eyes as she strode over to pull out the knife. “Nice spell,” she said. “But shall I list the ways your strategy was stupid?” She helped him to his feet. “Don’t impersonate someone you’ve seen for maybe five minutes in your whole life. And besides knowing enough about them to get their mannerisms right, have enough self-awareness to limit your own quirks.” She moved her right arm in an exaggerated imitation of his nervous habit. “And don’t talk about yourself when you’re trying to be someone else -- at least don’t react to gossip about you like it’s personal. You should have seen that I was testing you right away, but especially when I talked about Leo. Anybody can see that you don’t exactly cover up your issues with him very well.”